$100M Founder Reveals The Secret To Making Data Profitable

All right, what's up? We got Anand here. People don't know this, but right before the episode, I asked the guest all of them, I was like, Oh yeah, like what's your role now at the company? And I always ask this, I say, How can I brag about you? How can I say something really impressive that you've done to give you credibility right away so people know that they should listen? And I was like, Can we say that your company does over a hundred million dollars in revenue? His words were Yeah, I got in trouble last time I came on for divulging too much info, but you could say yeah. Around what did you say? Around the Hundred million ish neighborhood. Yeah. Around hundred million number. Yeah. So we'll go with that.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I'll put my law in it like my day song on the road. You've come on before and I was looking at the comments and they were all basically this guy's fantastic, love his ideas, more of this guy. We need a part two, we need a part two. So here we are. Part two. with Anand, the founder of CB Insights. Who has transitioned on to doing bigger and better things now, um with the company.

I don't think he's doing bigger and better things though. Other things. Yeah. Smaller for sure. Actually. Smaller and worse things. Yeah, yeah, I'm just chronically online on Twitter. So yeah, it's definitely smaller, smaller things right now. And we don't normally do this, but but actually we're gonna make an exception for you. I wanna hear the founding story of CB Insights because You guys started out selling like PDFs and shit like that, and somehow that went from selling PDFs to starting a a you know, nine figure company. So I gotta hear this story. Can you take us back to the beginning?

Yeah, sure thing. So uh I left uh American Express where I work Jan one, two thousand eight, had written a book Were you a big dog at American Express or were you just like a normal guy there? Vice President, so you know, it was funny why my My wife's father was like, Oh, you're vice president, like next you're gonna be president and she had like no idea there's like forty thousand other vice presidents. That's what I used to think too. I I heard V P I was like, Oh, you're next to the line. Yeah, yeah, I was like But that's a pretty liberal job title, right? Yeah, they they hand those out a lot to make you feel like you're you're doing it. Well give people a sense. You were making like Like Two hundred grand a year or something like that. Is that like roughly. Yeah, two hundred, two fifty. Uh

So you know, it's it was good living, but I always wanted to do my own thing. Left uh gonna do this consulting, financial crisis hits, big banks are main customer. They basically Or worried about just staying solvent, so they just ghost us. and I'm paying two guys from my old team out of pocket and I'm just married. So you know, we're watching savings go down. Every week, every two weeks.

And um We work in the credit card industry, so we said what could we do in that space? and we started calling ex colleagues who worked at like Capital One and City and other places and basically started doing this You know, what do you think about delinquencies and loss rates, like the m the metrics that matter in that space.

And we'd give it back to them for free. Uh and they just liked it because they were like, Oh, am I super optimistic and I all my peers are super pessimistic, like I need to recalibrate. Why did you originally think that that was a good idea? Like um usually I have to see something to even know, oh, that's a business? Oh, cool. Like did you see something that existed and you were like We could do that for credit card data. No, no. So

I mean, in the beginning we just stumbled into tons of things. Like I was just like I can't keep paying these people out of my pocket. So It was like we were doing consulting for a school, like we just kept our feet moving and anybody who would throw money at us, like we were like, Yeah, we'll do that for you. Like it didn't matter. Uh this was just an area this guy Dominic who's my you know my teammate, he's like a savant on this stuff.

So we kinda were like, Hey, maybe we could do this and we were like Yeah, it was just a guess. Okay. So we started doing GLG calls, you know, the expert network calls. That was like making a little bit of money, definitely not enough to cover costs. And then We met this guy at this prime broker and these are the guys who like settle trades for hedge funds.

And you know, he was like, Hey, I think we could sell this because the mortgage crisis was starting to like kinda get you know, figure it out. He's like, I think credit cards is what people are gonna freak out about next. And Nick's like The thing that the beauty of what he saw was like he wasn't worried about what his customers cared about today. He's like, This is what they're gonna care about in the future.

Um and so we're like, Yeah, cool, like we can't sell it, maybe you can. We I spammed every hedge fund guy who went to Wharton. That I could find like nobody cared about what we had. But what did you have? Was it literally just like you sent a survey to twenty people? Yeah, it was a PDF that basically showed the trend of how people in the industry thought

Things were going in certain key metrics. But how many people in that industry? Oh, like twenty five. And so you're like oh we have Vice presidents from Amex, from Visa, from MasterCard, whatever. And the thing that they wanted was uh the the important data was basically like our delinquencies, our defaults gonna go up because that's gonna spell

that's gonna cause like a bunch of ripple effects. And that had just happened with mortgages. Where if mortgages fail Which nobody thought they would fail, but when they failed It caused all these ripple effects and banks went under and all the stuff. So so as an investor, you needed that info, is that correct? Yeah. So there's that macro view and some of it is like, hey, I hold a billion dollars of American Express stock.

Right. put some number into a model that says how they're gonna do the next quarter. It's like a channel check, right? Like you know, m I like people go to Apple manufacturers and try to figure out how many, you know hard drives or whatever they're shipping out to figure out how many MacBooks are gonna be created. This is kinda like the the digital equivalent of that. So Um they're trying to like front run the the quarterly r earnings report that's gonna come out later, right? You're basically trying to get

inputs to guess where they're gonna be so that if it's bad news or if it's good news, you can adjust accordingly before the rest of the market knows this information. Yeah, like they're they're living in like an information vacuum and so this isn't like the number But it's a little bit of in in like leading indicator sentiment that they can use. Sam, he said prime broker. Do you know what a prime broker is? I I I have I have no idea. Sounds sounds pretty sick, to be honest. Yeah. Is it prime like prime time? Like this is awesome. Yeah.

My I still this is my lay person understanding. So there's people who settle trades for hedge funds. Hedge funds buy and sell stock, and there's somebody who Executes that trade. And what they would do is they'd bundle research as part of the trade. So they'd be like, Hey if you Trade with us.

I'll give you all these other research services. And so they would call these soft dollars. And I think these have been sort of banned and outlawed or changed since, but we got at that time they were all this was all kosher. And um Why? They're they're they're banned because you're it you're influencing people to do stuff. Yeah, I think it was like, you know They were The stuff getting bundled in was maybe a little dicey and they just said, Listen, just charge him for

The trading as if it was trading and don't do all this other. You know, kinda Michigan uh that like you know gangs. It's like the prime brokers against the soft dollars. It's like oh man, these I don't know whose team I want to be on. Yeah, yeah. Why is it called a soft dollar? What what does that mean? I think it's because it's like you're not being charged directly for it. Like it's bundled in, right? But you're being charged for the trading. Gotcha. Right. So um So we go to Nick and and Nick we're like, Hey, twenty five hundred dollars, you know, a quarter or a month would be fantastic and Nick's like

No no no. I'm not like I'm not interested in that. We're gonna price this at twelve thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars, and a hundred thousand dollars. And we're like Hey, you know, bro, it's a PDF. And uh he's like, No, no, the way we're gonna do this is twelve thousand dollars just gets you the PDF. fifty thousand dollars gets you the PDF in a call.

And a hundred thousand dollars gets you the PDF a call and any time we hear something juicy, we pick up the phone for you and only ten of Only ten people can get that one. Right. It's like only fans for hedge funds. It's like for for a hundred grand you get feet. And the P Yeah, exactly. So so yeah. So nobody bought the foot package, right? Uh they but it was a great price anchor, right? And so what ended up happening was A bunch of people bought the fifty K package and the and the twelve K package.

And Yeah, it was like a build once, sell multiple times. So that was going really well. You know, we knew from the get go Mortgages had a a lifespan of like the crisis had a lifespan and we knew credit cards would have that too.

But It helped us put away enough money. And got, you know, me paying the team out of that business versus out of p savings. And then that's what funded CB Insight. So that was But here's the craziest part to me. Twenty people is not a lot of people to survey. How long did the survey take to complete?

Uh I mean we would do the survey via the phone. Right. And so like that would take You know, I don't know. Hour and a half, two hours per person, right? Because you like wanna get commentary. Right. It's not just

You think this is a one, two, three, four, five, right? It was like trying to get You know, context around it. Yeah, I mean it's not a large sample size. I think the big thing here is when you're dealing in big, big dollars Some information is better than no information. Right. That's that that's insane to me because basically like

The so so the hard part is finding a a a problem that needs to be solved where like more information or a or a survey could could solve it. But basically I could go on GLG, I can go on intro.co, I can go on all these websites, I could pay someone one thousand or two thousand dollars for an hour or two hours of their time, ask them tons of questions, aggregate all of that into a thing, and then resell it as a research report. For a survey. And that's Crazy to me. Those companies do that, right? I think the challenge that you'd have if you wanted to rebuild what we were building was

We knew all the people at the card companies. Right. And they trusted us to give us like to to have this conversation. Right. If you just show up, Sam, and you're like, hey Chief Risk Officer at Capital One, let's sit down and talk about What you're seeing, they'll be like I can't I'm not gonna I don't know what you're doing with that, right? So

we were able to kinda they knew us, so they knew we weren't gonna like do some incendiary thing with it, right? It was that we're gonna use this, we're gonna package it up into a survey, it's gonna be anonymized, so it's never gonna be a capital one sees weakness or cities like flying on delinquencies, right? It was always like aggregated and anonymized. So Yeah, like this these are great businesses. Like they're you know, data cooperatives or

Pool data. It just trust is like the big thing that you need in order to get people in the industry to open up to you. How much did you guys make do you think off the PDFs during that? one year run. Uh we probably made like seven hundred thousand dollars.

And what was your reaction at the time? I was like I don't have to go back to work at a big company. Like that was it. Like it was just relief. Right. Uh And yeah, you know, it felt

In the in on pron reflection, like we just stepped in shit. Like we just got super lucky that we met this guy Nick, that he had the foresight to think about pricing this way. So Um But yeah, I mean I was just thankful to be honest,'cause I was like to go back twenty ten, tw two thousand nine after leaving Amex, like would have been

going back sort of tail between my legs, saying I couldn't hack it as an entrepreneur, like the ego hit there. Would have been That would that would have been That would've been the worst part. That'd been like devastating, I think, for me. So uh so yeah, that was that was just happy. Jason Freed said something amazing when he uh when we talked to him a few months ago.

He said, um it's better to be extra weird early on because as a company grows, your um people start acting more corporate. And so the more weird and unique, you start as. Hopefully it's ine it's inevitably gonna get watered down, but hopefully the watered down version is still unique and weird. I didn't realize that C D Insights Stands for chubby brain.

And your original logo Basically looks like me as an eight year old holding a brain. And the name of the company is called Chubby brain. That is awesome.

Yeah, I like the name. It didn't work out. Uh and uh Yeah, we tried to sell Chubby Brain like the service to And they were like

We can't use a service called Chubby Brain. And so uh And you know, they they weren't it wasn't just them being like hoity toity. They were like, listen, at the bottom of every slide we put source for our data. And we can't put source chubby brain at the bottom'cause it kills our credibility. And so

That night. You know, John and I kinda went to a bar and we were like, We gotta change your name and that's when we became C B Insights. So that was the That's the genesis story of our name. Sean have Sean and I have an LLC that HubSpot Pays Us. Pages to. And I'm pretty sure he wanted to name the LLC something like ridiculous. Do you do I don't remember what it was, Sean, but I remember thinking I'm like

I can't put this on an invoice. Like uh we're playing Hood Rat Media. Let's go to watch it. It was Hoodrat Media. Yes. You wanted to call it Hoodrat Media. Uh and I was like Sean, like no one was gonna see Hood Rat Media other than the accountant paying the bill. And that's like the one person who we don't want to like think this is a scam. Right. There was a I don't know if this is an apocryphal story. There was some guy selling something online. It was like a crappy product. And everybody would ask for a refund and then he'd send them a check But the check

would be from a company called like I Like Little Boys Inc. And so Like nobody would actually cash the refund check. Because they were like, I'm not gonna go to the bank with like that. You said after the last episode you said that people reached out to you, and we're gonna get to like a bunch of different ideas you have, but you said after the last episode people reached out to you saying, like I wanna do this data stuff and you said They're running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction.

And you wanted to correct people for uh who who were interested in this. What were what were we gonna say to th those people? Yeah, I think the big thing is folks kinda thought Oh, I have data, it has intrinsic value. And that's the problem. Like data itself is not valuable. It's what you can do with data that makes it valuable. So The customer doesn't care that you have data, they don't care how hard it was for you to get, they don't care it's proprietary. They care. You know, about what edge is it gonna give them.

Right. And so Like you have to think about the edge and the outcome you're gonna drive for the customer. Up front. So I th I think of it as like three things. Like I call it like ECO. So you got your the edge, you have to define what that's gonna be. Uh you have to the C is sort of can you collect it? And then the O is just the opportunity.

Right. And so people would reach out like hey, I have data on Um You know, how much media companies spend on their writers. Right.

And it was like Okay. You have it, right? Like who's gonna use it? They're like oh, I'm gonna talk to like heads of editorial teams. And it's like listen, media companies one is a target or just a terrible place to sell. Like these are dying companies and you're trying to sell them stuff. So bad thing there.

Now you're trying to sell to an head of editorial Oh. I'm painting with a broad brush, probably isn't the most like data curious, data aware type of person. Um So it was

I think that's like a lot of it is like figure out what edge it's gonna drive and then you know Obviously hopefully you can collect it. And then how big is the opportunity, right? Financial services Uh AI

Companies now are big buyers of data. Um Tech. uh and then like the sales and marketing ad tech world, like those are your big three verticals that you want to think about generally for you know, and I there are big data businesses and other verticals, but If you're starting at

level zero when you're building a B to B data company. think about the vertical and think about what edge you're gonna drive, right? Like Nice to have benchmarking data. Is like a quick way to you know, build you could like maybe become like a thousandaire off of like that type of company, right? Like you're not going to build

like a multi million dollar business selling benchmarking data to Unless it's benchmarks that Like help you make big decisions. You know, salary benchmarks, awesome. Right. Uh you know, how much Um

I paying how much order my delinquencies versus other big card companies? Amazing. But if it's You know, benchmarks on how much you pay for Slack versus other people. Like nobody cares about that. And so what was your checklist? You said so basically Who's the buyer? Like do they ha do they have money and do they have do they care about this? Two, what edge does the data give them? Right. That was like number two, that's the most important thing. Is there a third and fourth criteria? Yeah, it's really I mean, if I'm trying to if I boil it down, it's the edge, it's collection feasibility, like how are you gonna actually collect this information? And then three is opportunity. And on collection, the big one is.

Folks sometimes have a hack. They're like, Oh, I gotta in with this person And they can give me this exhaust data from their company. The problem with companies built like that is Like When you lose access to the hack.

the whole company's dead, right? It's kinda like supply chain risk in our world. Like if if we bought all of our data from one provider And they decide to change the rules or go under Like you're you're dead in the water. So Yeah, so how you collect the data is the other one. So yeah, edge, collection, and opportunity are the three that I would look at and really scrutinize a lot up front. Can you explain how how those worked? Like just to finish the story of Chubby Brain to C B Insights successful company, what did CB Insights do on those three criteria? So, you know.

Who was the buyer? What was the edge you gave them? And then what was the collection feasibility? Yeah. So the the buyer and it's changed over time. Initially it was investors and investment banks. So think of like V C PE investment banks. Yeah, they are in the business of sourcing, like that's one of their key responsibilities. They make their money off of finding and sourcing the right deals. And what we saw was there wasn't a really structured way for folks to do that. So that was the edge we wanted to deliver is we're gonna give you access to more companies, we're gonna get them to you quicker, and we're gonna have deeper, richer profiles on them. So that's the

the sort of sourcing edge. Um over time it's it's more Um, you know, the opportunity was in that group to start and I think that's another big thing is like start really narrow. Uh you know, if if I made a mistake along the way is we got too broad. So

Opportunity was in that group, the edge was, you know, a sourcing edge. And then collection was in the beginning it was just ground and pound. Like it was we've had fifty thousand articles about funding and MA events. And me and the guys just went through manually. And

put in columns in a spreadsheet, here's the investors, here's the amount, here's the valuation, whatever we could find. Then we got lucky and hired some amazing engineers and they basically reverse engineered that process. and automated it, right? And then over time now we do interviews and we do surveys. So like There's seven ways to collect data, at least the way I think about it. Now we probably do five out of those seven. In the beginning it was just

brute force. Like that's the way. And I think that like You know, Henry Shuck at Zoom Info, like they used to call into company switchboards or whatever and they'd be like, Hey, what's Bob's extension? And like that's how Zoom Info would get, you know, Bob at IT's, you know, numbered extension. So a lot of really good data businesses have been built doing really like data janitor work in the beginning. And then over time they get more sophisticated and all that good stuff. And you've done this like in a really cash efficient way. I know that you've raised uh a series A, but I think you've said like you're not even sure entirely if you needed to raise that money. Do you still own a large percentage of the company?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that you know we raised late, we bootstrapped for six years. Uh yeah, we're like we're a very pain tolerant company, I would say. So we uh we raised after six years So yeah, the team and I own like a you know, a solid chunk of the company. So there was an article that came out uh last year.

Uh about eight months ago. You don't have to say if this is true or not. I'm just reading uh the headline of the article. And it said It's a CD Insights to Way eight hundred million dollar sale. So if that were true. Which you don't I don't want you to even say if it is or is not true.

That would mean that you could walk away with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Would you w consider that to be a successful outcome? given how like humbly the company started, or are you trying to go even bigger? I mean to say that's not a successful outcome would sound insane. Uh so yes, that would be a successful outcome. I do think there's a massive opportunity in front of the business and you know, we hired a a CEO earlier this year and he's a killer.

Hey man, Leo. Uh and uh So I think like I think this business w especially with generative AI has like a lot of legs to grow. But yeah, I mean selling for eight hundred million Back. You know, then uh

Would have been a fantastic outcome for everybody involved. But yeah, I think we can get even bigger. What are some of the data businesses that you think have legs? So you said a lot of people reached out saying, Hey, I got access to this data and you're like uh I don't think you kinda have it quite right. Um Are there

businesses that you've seen or you you think somebody should go build a data business in. I haven't thought a ton about like new data businesses, right? I think the areas that are really interesting or ones to look at that are doing really well, right? So there's one company I saw recently that was pretty awesome. It's called Razor's Edge. Right. And so what they do is I thought they're

method of doing it was cool. So they started they're like a database of of donors, right? So if you're a charity, you need to raise from these high net worth folks. And what they did was they started off with this database of donors and so You know. People like charities and foundations and universities might buy it.

And what they then grew into was a CRM. to help you basically manage your outbound and your entire relationship with them. So they kinda did, I imagine, sort of this ground and pound method to capture this data in the beginning. Now what folks do is if Sam's running a charity and he uploads his list of donors They'll

clean it and organize it and then Everybody sort of gets the benefit of that clean data, right? And so like it's become a like a a pool data data cooperative and then they've added workflow on top of it. So I think that That's an an um really impressive formula. Going from data to data co op.

to workflow tool. Right. I think like that's kinda the future, right? Because you wanna get into people's workflow. Um So that's one company I really like, uh that I've just kinda come across recently.

Um you know the other area that I think is Interesting. I don't think anybody's doing this, right? So I think there's a The potential for like a high end glass door. Right. So Glassdoor sort of generates like this

you know, disaffected like group of people who like to bitch online. Um Right. Like if you're in if you're a hedge fund And you want to know like what's going on at the company, a lot of that is a function of like how well is the CEO leading?

the organization. And there's really no good way of Understanding that. So I think and again I haven't validated is I wonder if you could go out and interview you know, maybe you have to pay them a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars and say, Listen

I wanna interview execs on the team and ex execs. And I wanna just Yeah, I'm gonna do this deep interview on like what do people view as the you know, the pros, cons, the strategic vision of this CEO. And basically like get

Kind of a Inside view of The quality of and the followership of a CEO Which

You know, maybe an indicator of you know, the quality of that business and how it's going to do in the future. So I think like that's it. That's an interesting idea and you can take these transcripts and use like generative AI to extract structured data from it. So That's like one that

I I'm not gonna work on it, but I think could be interesting, you know, and again it like it hits a a high value segment, right? It's like the old like uh Why'd you rob the bank'cause that's where the money is, right? Like you know, hedge funds are Like hedge funds are great. Yeah, a great

Kind of uh Dude that's pretty interesting to use the transcripts too, or also the audio recordings. Have you ever had uh like an argument? with your wife or something like that, where it like imagine these Peep executives describing the CEO where that you're like, Hey, was the CEO any good? Uh and they'd be like,

He's good. Versus He's good. Do you know what I mean? Like we're gonna look at like we're gonna look at the inflection of your voice. Uh we'd love to go. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean you can do sentiment on it. You can You know, look at all sorts of things that I think could be interesting. And again, like it's not gonna tell you to buy or sell that stock.

But it's another Input. Right. And and then there's these activist shareholders, right? And if you see like Hey, listen, over time you know, ex CEO, like the team is losing

their faith in that person, like now this becomes a reason for that activist to come and say, Hey you know, Joe who's running X, like the t he's lost the team and stock performance sucks. And they're not doing these things, right? So it becomes an input and these are people Oh. the buyers here, like they're making hundreds of million dollar, billion dollar decisions. So I think that's another

you know, interesting vector. I don't you know, there's probably all sorts of insider trading sort of complications that you gotta deal with on that one. So Uh don't run with that. When you had Check out this razor's edge thing. Uh uh'cause I uh you said that, I got fascinated.

Uh, do you know how much money Razor's Edge makes? I do not know that. So You were like this company looks interesting. So they're publicly listed.

There are twenty twenty four company guidance, um Over a billion dollars in revenue. What is it? Two hundred fifty million dollars of free uh free free cash flow. Here you go. You heard it here first.

Very impressive. Sean, when you had the milk road. 'Cause I know we've thought about this at the hustle, but it I wasn't mature enough to see the opportunity. When you had the milk road, and even now as you have like Kind of a mini

Media Empire. Have you thought about data monetizing it via data versus Advertising. I've

Thought about it, but in uh It's like asking, you know, my daughter have you thought about algebra? She's like, What? Yeah, I think maybe, yeah, sure. It's like I don't even know what I would have been thinking about. For example With Milk Road. We did what you're talking about. We would go and we would interview whales. So we would go to like

twenty five of the biggest crypto whales. These are guys who are placing tens of millions or hundred million dollar bets. on NFTs and coins. And now Remember with crypto If you're a whale Air

Whales have multiple characteristics. First, it's a small market. Second, these guys have a big check. So big check, small market equals they can actually move the market. And third, they're very influential, meaning when they do something, everybody else follows in because they have a reputation. They became a whale because they picked something early on well. So everybody thinks this person's the oracle. And we interviewed them and we talked about How what's your bullishness? What's basically sentiment on the market? We asked what projects they're most most bullish on, so which what their picks are.

I mean all this info And then instead of selling it to maybe uh crypto funds or hedge funds or anybody like that. We're right. This will be a great lead magnet for free newsletter subscribers. Let's give it all away for free as a PDF in order to get subscribers. And we did as like a re it was a bonus if you referred people, for example.

And that thing was so valuable actually that we didn't even really we didn't really understand The value that we had. So it's like somebody who now Airbnbs and makes a hundred K a year off their kids' bedroom that's unused. Um At the time it just seemed like an empty room. So we just thought it we didn't understand the value of that.

unused asset at that time. I mean I think once you start a data business, like you are now on a treadmill, right? Like you have to Somebody's buying a subscription, right? So what Sean did Was smart in the sense of like if it wasn't working, he didn't have to keep doing it. Right. But once you sell it to an institution, now they're gonna expect it quarterly or monthly, and now you sort of are on this you know, now you gotta keep doing it, right? And so um so you know, it's like you wanna be thought before you jump in that two that I've thought of

I'll shoot them at you. Uh these are half baked ideas, but two that I've thought of in the past. You tell me if you think they'd be good or bad ideas. Uh they're both very similar. The first one is Um headhunting talent. So executive talent. So all across the tech industry, talent is at a premium, right? So somebody who's a

Let's call it like VP, S VP and up. So all the way up to the C suite. Those people will make Seven figures, so so millions of dollars if not. Tens of millions of dollars as their package.

Um when they go join a tech company. And the way that the whole industry works is you have a four year vesting cycle typically. And Knowing when somebody is ready to look for a new job is extremely valuable.

Knowing where where they're at in their vest cycle, that they might be willing to hop And switch Um I think that's you know valuable information that could be used. in the recruiting business, which is typically just a services business, not a a very data driven business.

And so one idea was to understand the vesting cycles of the top one percent of Silicon Silicon Valley. Talent. In order to maybe create a a recruiting Either a d a recruiting data business or a recruiting service business on top of that data. That was the first idea. Quick reaction to that. It might be a bad idea. I never did it. Yeah, I probably pr I think the recruiting service business is a better idea than the data business. I think with data

When you have to try to get somebody to do a new behavior, that's really hard. Right. And so recruiters who are like used to You know, it's really networky and it's very like, Hey, I'll take you to lunch and like that kind of business. And then being like, Hey, now we have data. And again there are some

Ones that are like really data driven, but I would say generally it's probably not their MO. And so you know, when you're like, Hey, do this thing'cause it'll make you more powerful that you've never done before That's tends to be like a tough hill to climb, but building a services business

with this as your edge, I think is an interesting Could be an interesting idea. Let me tell you another one. That's not exactly data. But I'll lump it in here. So I saw this business called home options.

I love the idea of this business. So what this guy was doing was He was going to homeowners and he'd say Who are not selling their home. He's like, Hey, I'll give you A thousand dollars cash today. For the right to sell your home whenever you're ready.

And they'd be like, What do you mean? He's like, I'll give you a thousand bucks today. You wanna make a new patio? You wanna you want to Buy a new couch. Here's a thousand bucks today just to say when it comes time to sell my house. I'll use you or one of your partners as my agent.

And then they would take those options and they would bundle them up and they would go to a broker in the area and they would say Hey, I have five hundred home options like uh uh options to sell people's homes Would you guys like to buy these for three thousand dollars or two thousand dollars, whatever it was? And then I'm making up the numbers here, uh just to to kind of not

Put this guy's whole business model on blast. But he would then sell it at an upcharge to them and they would say, Great, we'll happily take that because when these come to fruition Each one of these. Options when they sell their home is worth ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars, whatever it is, right? So there was like a business model built in.

And I thought this was genius. I was like wow, this guy's taking all of this Like future leads. Giving them a no brainer deal today. And then immediately flipping it to somebody who's in the business of having those leads. Now the obviously the timeline is the hard part, right? When is somebody gonna they're gonna sell their house twenty years from now, thirty years from now, and I'm sure there's some smart way to like filter for people that might be

Maybe younger, maybe more mobile, more willing to move in a sooner timeline. I thought there was a similar business somebody could do in the tech world again, just back to the world I know. Which is Ah non, you do CB insights, you're leaving, you're gonna do a new company, let's say.

As an investor, those types of people are very, very valuable. And I would actually pay found I know VCs would pay founders, like let's say Sam, right? They're like Sam, you did the hustle, you're a great founder. Before you do Hampton. If I could just pay for the option, the right to invest in your next company.

And you get a bunch of cash today that might be runway for you to figure things out, might be just go on vacation, whatever you want to do with that cash. And you're just saying, Cool, I'll give you guys first look. First right of refusal on my next company. Yeah, I like that one. I think you know, VCs have these EIRs, entrepreneur in residence.

Which kind of are like that, right? It's like, you know, hey I'm gonna pay you and you can figure out your next idea. I think the question I'd have is If somebody just had a successful exit, is the amount you could give them gonna actually be enough of an incentive, but if you can figure that out. Right. I there was a firm that

did it wasn't this, but they would basically send term sheets to startups they wanted to invest in. Right. They just be like, Hey, here's a term sheet, here's a valuation. And like once you see that, it sort of like incepts you, like you're like, Oh, I think we're worth that. And You might not be worth that, but it would start the conversation. So I wonder if you could come up with the right number, do you just send

a big mail merge to like all the founders who are meet the f meet you know fit the bill. And then just See if that generates conversations for you, right? And worst case They at least are like they have a They have they like you. If you're not like a you know, a D bag in the meeting. They like you and then

When you it is time, they at least have a good impression of you. Like, yeah, it's an interesting deal flow idea. Now that you're no longer uh full on full duty at CB Insights. Uh, I know that you're kinda tinkering around with some other things and you're like in an interesting phase right now where instead of being theoretical uh on MFM about which ideas you think are cool, you're actually actually you know, you're being practical, you're like, I I actually may pursue one of these things. What are you thinking about doing? Yeah, so I yeah, I don't think it's a May, like I'm I am going to do this. So uh

What I'm trying what we're working on is building a school of entrepreneur. So it's a In person sixth to twelfth grade. Uh, school, you know, if you know the IMG Academy, right, like for sports. Right. Like the basic idea is like people go

pro in sports out of high school. Like you should be able to go pro in business. IMG, if I remember correctly, it's like a school built mostly for athletes that are potentially gonna go pro. uh based in Florida and it was owned by Endeavor, which owns UFC and TKO and whatever PBR, whatever else Endeavor owns, a large publicly traded company. And they recently sold it. for I think one and a half billion dollars. Yeah. And it's it's just a high school. Pretty much, right? Is it a school or is it just a training facility? You know, it's it's a full school. So it's a boarding school in Florida. It started off as the Bolitary Tennis Academy and then it sort of morphed into

this and they do all sports, you know, tennis, track, football, basketball. Um And And they do summer camps. Like their big business their other big business is summer camps, right? Uh or camps, let's call them. And Dude, if you're spending that much money to go to that high school for track and field in hopes of getting an RO uh getting a return uh on your investment, that's like that's not that's like going into a quarter million dollar debt for an art history degree. You know what I mean? Like that it ain't there.

The thing that they've done really well is, you know, they recruit really elite athletes and you know, those m those really elite ones might get a scholarship or you know, there's like um Let's say there's five basketball teams at IMG, the top team will actually get sponsorship from Nike and stuff that'll be used to defer uh you know, tuition costs. So that really elite athletes maybe get a free ride or a close to free ride.

You know, then everybody else who's probably quite good, but also might have a parent or parents who think like You know, little Bobby and little Sally are gonna go pro. who just have like visions of their kid going pro in something. We'll spend a lot of money, you know, I think tuition is like you know, forty to seventy thousand dollars.

Um And then the camps are a great feeder for the school. But they're also like You know, parents want their kids to achieve a lot and they want to get you know, they wanna give'em a lot of opportunity. Um, and so the camps are

Yeah, I am paint with a broad brush like, you know, dad who played baseball, who always wanted to go pro, can't go pro could could never make it. you know, once their son you they think has a shot and they're like, hey, I MG's the best place to go And it is And

Then they uh you know, and then they pay a lot of money from these camps. So It's a pretty brilliant model. They just got acquired by a company that's basically acquiring So private schools are just a Giant business. Um, and so they're acquiring private schools around the world. Uh they're kinda doing a roll up

But yeah to Yeah, I MG's A great brand uh you know, has had Really legit. Athletes come out of it.

I love the idea of creating a school. I love the idea of creating it as a As there's many variations of this idea, but creating as a boarding school for uh around entrepreneurship or a different model of teaching. So can you just like Here's what I want you to do. Can you give me the

Two minute Impassioned rant. The rant on what needs to change and what you're gonna do. What's broken and what you're gonna do about it. But I want you fired up for this one. Alright, all right. So Schools today are about compliance and conformity.

Right. That's what they do. And if you go back and look at how schools started It was Rockefeller and sort of these titans of industry. Basically trying to create compliant factory workers, right? And so when you go to it, it's hey, show up at school on this time, sit in your seat. We're gonna tell you some tasks to do. When the bell rings, get up like a robot and go to the next class. And then at the end of the day

Like, you know, we're gonna dismiss you with another bill, right? And so What they've done is create like people who are really good at reading a map. You know, and it's like a scavenger hunt. Hey, I need some community service on my thing. Let me go do that. I'll start some bullshit nonprofit to look good for college applications. I'll play three years of a sport. And so this checklist that you have to do Uh y you know, to to navigate the map. And I think what we need is a

school for kids who are actually are gonna build the map, like for explorers and developers. Um And so that's like what a school of entrepreneuring is about, which is You know, follow your curiosity and build stuff.

Um And like learn how to think versus what to think, right? I think entrepreneuring is a lot like engineering. You know, even if you decide not to become an entrepreneur, like you learn a way of thinking. That's gonna serve you well wherever you go. But yeah, the idea is like you'll go pro in business. You won't take A P classes. There'll be no SAT A C T prep.

Um it's going to be about Um You know, learning and building and it's really like experiential, right? So we're working on like having retail on campus. So if you want to learn geometry, you're gonna lay out the floor plan of your retail store. And that's how you're gonna learn geometry. It's not gonna be

You know, hey, let's learn the Pythagorean theorem in a class and then your kids like When the hell am I ever gonna use this? So Um So yeah, that's what we're gonna Are you gonna uh raise money for this thing?

Uh so we've got You know A few folks. Already so we've got A decent amount of capital committed.

This is not like my next startup in the sense of Like you know, C B Insights is gonna check my significance box or success box. this is like my significance box, right? And so I might start two, three other companies, like I'm trying to We're trying to think of a engine to like build two hundred thousand companies, so this is like

My next thing till Like, you know, when I die at my desk, like this is the thing that I'm gonna be working on. So it's not a It's not like a V C back private school to exit. It's uh Yeah, and like I think the big thing is like

Recruiting formidable kids. And this is one of the biggest challenges. IMG has all these stats, like, you know, who's the kid who jumps the highest and scores the most points. We don't have that. So it's like But the kid who has a five thousand subscribers on YouTube is probably the kid who should be at this school, not the kid who's like really good at Yeah.

standardized test, right? A kid who sold stuff on roadblocks or built a lawnmowing business. So Yeah, but this that's that's the vision. Where's your campus gonna be? Don't know. I think it you know, my partner on this is in LA. So it's you know, the coast would be easy family wise. Interestingly, red states are like much more open to education innovation. Um and so like that's a

conundrum we gotta figure out so We're we we got a lot of work to do before we figure that out. I if I was betting money it's probably gonna be on one of the coasts just'cause It makes logistics of life easier, but And what would that curriculum look like to teach a sixth grader T.

Prepare for this stuff. But I think it's it's not subject based, right? It's like competency based, right? So it's um you know, critical thinking where it's Uh uh public speaking or you know having uh conversations um

And so a lot of it is like it's project based and experiential, right? So you know, what I mentioned earlier is like we're trying to figure out how to have retail on site with the school. And so this kids are operating and building a company. And so in that You know, in order to build the company you have to do algebra. to build your model, right? You have to

lay out the floor plan of the shelves in the in the retail store, and that requires geometry, right? And so I think like you know, I've a have a daughter who's you know, fourteen and like she'll constantly come home and ask like Hey, when am I ever gonna use this? Right? Like that's a common question. And so We're trying to find ways of

integrating it organically into what you're doing so that you never feel like I'm learning something. That makes no sense, um And so that's, you know, what we're working on now. We're talking to some Teachers Who can help us sort of build out the lesson plans here.

And uh And then, you know, kinda get going from there. And the crazy thing about this business, or the hardest part in my opinion It's like once

Harvard. becomes Harvard, it's easy to maintain. So like when you think about like All this uh protest going on. People are like, Oh, Harvard's going to shit, these colleges are going to shit. In my opinion, I hear that and I'm like, No, it's not. It's withstood so much crap. Like once a brand is a brand, it's really hard to ruin.

But it's hard to convince your first group of parents to actually become a customer of yours. Uh, how are you gonna solve that? Yeah, so I actually don't

That's as hard. So I posted this on Twitter. I got a bunch of inbound from folks. Um who like really like the idea and I'd say it came from two camps. It came from like Rich tech people. And then it came from

I'd say generally people in the middle of the country who are like I have a son or daughter who's I think is really smart But who is struggling In the sort of Pram, exam, erase model of schools. Like they're not good at like memorizing fifty state capitals, but they're like

really good at You know. building a audience on YouTube or whatever, right? And they're like I think my kid has more potential than is being realized. And I actually think there's a bunch of folks like that. So I'd agree with you, Sam, if I said

Hey, I'm trying to recruit we're trying to recruit Manhattan, like Upper East Side parents. Right, who like You know, want like that. У одмаро

But I think there's a bunch of folks and if you look at the home schooling statistics and growth. Like there's a lot of people who are unhappy with how schooling is happening in this country and they're just opting out. And So I think there's a big segment of people who feel like, you know, I've got

A kid with a lot of potential who's just not that Potential's being squashed. Um And so yeah, I've had like a lot of good conversations with folks that

You know, I think the market for this is is giant actually. And if we could recruit A hundred formidable kids from each state, right? Like that's Five thousand kids, you know, uh I think that's Very, very feasible. You have

A few ideas on this list I want to go through. Can you tell us about these? So we'll start with the first one. Slime museums. Yeah, so I yeah, I don't know if your your kids Sean, your kids might be old enough. Like slime is Like crack cocaine for kids, right? So there's this place in New York City called the Slumu Institute, and my kids wanted to go there. So we went on a weekend.

And We get in there and you know, the thing I do when I go to a place when I see a pack, I start talking to like the staff. And I was like Hey, how many people come through this place? And

Sh the woman was like, Well, pre Covid it was twelve hundred, but right now we're doing like five to six hundred a day. And I was like per day. We spent forty dollars a ticket. And then we spend another 30 for like an upsell where like they dump slime on your head and they video record it and stuff, right? So 70 bucks four of us to 280. You know, when you started doing the math on this

And then You know, a s and then at the end they sell you slime. And so it's like a t let's say one out of five people actually buy it, right? When so I I came home, I immediately went to Google Sheets. I was like I gotta put a model like a model together. And I was like, okay, this one place in New York City probably does like six to eight million dollars of revenue.

Um And the beauty of it was that because it's slime Like There were like ten people who worked in this pretty big facility. 'Cause it was really like interactive, but you didn't need people to like run the exhibits. It was just like the kids would just be like, Oh, this slime smells like this, and this slime is like

Greasy or whatever. Um And uh So it was really low overhead. So like Money printing machine

I think I just read that they did thirty million. Now they have LA, Atlanta, a couple of other places. So I think last year they did thirty million at these Sly Museums. Um And I think like in general these like kids experiential type of museums, if you want to call it that. You know, museum of illusion, spy museum. Like They all

Kill it and they've all like got this template where There's very it's very not labor intensive. And I think like that's part of the genius. So I loved this business and these two women are just killing it, which is amazing. So that was

Think there's a big opportunity there and other experiential stuff. I I just wish most of them were good. Like I we go to a bunch of them and like some of them are just Like you're just like grifty, like money grabs and you're like, Oh man, I spent like two hundred fifty dollars for You know, this, but some of'em are like this one are quite excellent. So that that was one. Yeah, to me these are like the new build a bear workshops. It's uh

out of the house. It's a kids activity. Kids gonna be super excited about it. It could be a birthday party, it could just be a weekend, it could be whatever And as the parent You know You buy the forty dollar ticket, but it's never the end. They're like the upsells are too strong in the moment, right? Cause you need the video, you want the kid wants the slime on the way out. It's basically like a a gift shop on the way out.

And um obviously these things have like a craze period where It becomes the thing and then it gets written up in all the magazines and the New Yorker and you see it all all the influencers go and then You know, there is some normal on the other side of it, but um It's interesting to see how people have reinvented the the Chuck E cheeses of the world. to be optimized around social media.

Meaning How do you do things that are gonna be photo worthy? um that are gonna be shared inherently um by people who are going through the experience. And

Also, you need to get kids out of the house, off their screens, doing things. It's Yeah, as a parent that you know, there's a there's a huge need for that. And there's a kind of like a a much bigger appetite'cause even if you do the Slime Museum once, twice a year There's a lot of other weekends that uh that you could do something. So there can actually be many of these in this this model.

Yeah, for sure. It's uh yeah, it's pretty genius. So that that was that's one area I'm thinking about. Um So the other one I think That's interesting. So I ran across this company called Dillo. And it's like a giant like Amazon Go store.

And so what they do is They go to property managers that have at least two hundred peop two hundred like housing units in an area multifamily. And They'll say, Listen, we're gonna set up this like Basically compact

Convenience store. On you're in your community. And It's like stocked with all the good stuff, right? And so like, you know, I I live in a city, but you know, I go visit my mom

You know, if if we need to get milk, it's like I gotta get in the car, I gotta drive eight minutes, and I basically like spent a half hour of my life to buy something that's like seven dollars. So What these guys do Is they put this convenience store, it's like Amazon Go style. So it's you know, one person goes in, they sort of t they badge in only one person can be in the store. They're on a clock.

So they gotta get out in a certain amount of time and they just go and buy stuff and then It just sort of like auto debits their account or whatever. Um and so You know, they go to the property developer, the property manager, say, Listen, I'm gonna put up we'll put up the hundred thousand dollars to build this out. And we'll restock it.

and we'll cut you in as a property manager on a p on some of the revenue. You know, once we sort of recoup our investment. Um And so I thought like this is an amenity now that the property manager can offer to their to their tenants. It's a revenue stream on top of it. And so I thought for th for Dillo, like I thought this was a really good

distribution Hack, I guess. for them. Uh and so I really like this idea. And you know, obviously By the way, we had this idea on the podcast like several years ago. I don't know if you remember this. This is one of the drunk ideas, I believe. Uh in the I think it was in the drunk ideas episode might have been one of the other ones. I was like, Why isn't there a neighborhood

shop that's basically run, you know, by the HOA in a way, or uh, you know, by the by the members of the community. that and then all you do is wholesale in the ing the the products. You basically make take the markup of the Uh of the rest. And so you have a grocery store that's in the neighborhood, basically. Um

That's kind of what this is. So do they have the tech like Amazon Go where it auto Figures out what you took off the shelf. Yeah, so there's no staffing,'cause that's the big thing here, right?'Cause What the property manager doesn't want is hey, the store's not open because, you know, person X didn't show up. So this is twenty four by seven.

And you you know, it's got the cameras and whatnot and you know, again, like r reportedly Um And yeah, it'll just say, you know, hey, your total bill is X and sort of those convenience store prices which tend to be Yeah, kind of. high margin and yeah, you'll get

build, you know, either to some credit card or maybe on your, you know, your HOA or something and You know, the thing they talk about is over time they'll like learn to personalize like what's in the store, right? So if like you know, this community really likes like, you know, certain type of Cheetos, like that's what they're gonna see more of. So This company looks like it's like brand new and tiny. Like I can't find anything on the internet. There's no founder, there's no CEO, I can't find anything. It's really yeah. So I I was just talking to a friend of mine who's in real estate and property management. And so like

He was telling me about this and he's like, Yeah, they've got a bunch of facilities and you know, I think they're targeting like the Sun Belt, right? Like'cause if you're in New York City You can walk to these things, right? But if you're in most areas of the Sun Belt, the Carolinas, Texas, et cetera. Like you just can't do that. And so they're trying to solve that problem.

Um yeah, so I think their app their app has six reviews. So you have to have their app to get into the store and only has six reviews. So I I assume this is either brand new or just not popular yet. It's early days, I think they have a few facilities up and running, right? But um But yeah, I just thought like the way they're going to market. You know, essentially like They're sort of B to B to C, right? They're going to the property managers who then are blessing this

And then they're gonna you know, the property managers'cause they have a vested interest in making money on this. are gonna start promoting it as well to their community. It's like a Did you do like the napkin math on like what you think this could be? I didn't do that. You know, what I was trying to figure out was and my friend didn't know yet'cause they're in the negotiation phase.

I was like, you know How much do they need? to make back before you as a property manager start making money and what's the revenue cut there? Um But I mean, this is like a scale play, right? Like can they be at the new dollar store?

in every multifamily kind of community out there. Um And yeah, I think like that's the angle and then you know, I don't know if there's en if are there certain large multifamily property developers and managers they can go to and get all of a sudden, you know, hey We're now all of a sudden a hundred.

You know. developments. So but I yeah, I don't know. I I I suspect it's a big opportunity though. You wanna do one more of these? Yeah, do more. Do more. You just Sean's just like Dance. Again. Put the I put another coin in. I wanna go again. Yeah. So um

So my daughter's into fantasy football and if you watch ESPN now I think it's like become unwatchable because it's all about gambling. Right? It's like draft here's the line on this and you know, blah blah blah. And I'm like, I don't really want her seeing all this and she'll ask me and you know, I'm like, I don't think this is a good thing. So I started digging into The UK actually kinda did

opened up online gaming a bunch of years earlier. And if you look at the research there. Um, to nobody's surprise, it has not led to good things. Right. Like you know people are addicted and going into bankruptcy and all sorts of good things or bad things.

And so the US just whenever we do things, we do them at times a hundred. Right. And so The US is sort of doing this and so we're seeing this experiment play out. that is going to create, I think, a lot of challenges. And so I think the opportunity here is There used to be a business called I think American Addiction Centers. And they were basically for dru like drug and you know, alcohol dependents.

I think there's a w again, another offline play in Online addiction centers. Right. parents want their kids off the phone I'm addicted to porn. I'm addicted to DraftKings. I'm addicted to You know, trading naked call on Robin Hood, like whatever it might be.

Um And so you go there, and I think the interesting thing here is There's all this commercial real estate that's available. Um, you know, I wonder if you can get that really on the cheap. And this is a group that's a little bit more

Yeah, like I I think if you went to a commercial real estate provider and said, listen, I'm gonna bring in people who are addicted to hard drugs. They're gonna be like, No, no, I don't want that, right? But this is a group like, Hey, I'm gonna bring in a bunch of nerds who can't get off their phone And we're gonna treat them like

The the risk to a property owner is a lot less from this group. So I think you've got an opportunity to get Real estate on the cheap. And hopefully do some good in the world. I think the challenge with these American addiction center and these other ones was like Yeah.

for profit business you always want to lower the cost And so what ended up happening was like you know, people weren't getting good outcomes and service was really bad and you know, s I think there were some really horrible things that happened. So I think this is a big like uh inflection which is gonna happen. Like we've just I mean, I think Daven Busters now allows gambling on like

Top shot. Yeah. Like you know, Sean and I are playing against each other, like I can literally bet Sean, like, hey, I'm gonna get ten and you're gonna get less. It is pretty ridiculous. I was reading about um What what's the big one? Draft Kings or whatever.

They have account managers. So if you become I I read about this one woman who was making like 150 grand a year, so uh whatever that puts her at in terms of class, but not like crazy wealthy. And she's and she lost all of her money and she was five hundred thousand dollars in debt. And she had an account manager that was like, hey Kim Um We just opened up this new game. I know that you're a big fan of this type of game. You might be able to win all your money back if you try this new one out because it has higher stakes. And they had they added an account manager to like get her to start gambling more.

And it does freak you out and think in fifteen years when the kids who are growing up at those what are they gonna be like? And there's actually probably a an interesting case study. Sean and I both lived in Australia. And I don't know if you remember this, Sean, or if you were of drinking age when you went there. But in all of the bars. They have two things. They have a room

that has two things in it. It's like the main bar and then a different room. And the room has Uh Pokemachines, which is basically uh a slot machine. But then it also has Tons of TVs with every horse. uh cricket match so like a horse racing cricket match. I I forget what else they have. And you were just sitting there right there, gambling. You can gamble and get drunk and have uh a meal.

And It is like full all the time. I wonder what's going what w w what they've done to solve that similar problem that we are also going to face. They're like, Well, that's what the beer's for. When you're done, go over there and you'll feel better. That's the restaurants that are like KFC Taco Bell combined in one. It was like the seven deadly sins all under one roof. Yeah. New York New York City had something like it was called OTB off track betting. Right, and it was like horse races. But there was no they didn't

They didn't like do the uh the throw they didn't throw the alcohol grenade in there as well. Like it was You know, New York has s has standards, right? Like we're not gonna allow that. So uh So yeah, it was just Just gambling. But I mean, yeah, now it's just like on your phone. So I I think like

This is A In you know, this is like a mega trend that's gonna come out. I I think you're you're definitely on to something. This is um Like the inflection is so real.

the influx of gambling into sports is like It happened overnight. It went from Never discussed. to everything is sponsored or integrated in about like if you're watching the NBA playoffs, it says in the third quarter, it's like the the line at the start of the game, the current live action line is this. And you know, every player, all the NIL deals, they can do this now. So there's like

Th the the floodgates opened as to how much is gonna get pushed on people. As somebody who used to gamble a ton I know that For most people, it's not gonna work out. They are not gonna beat the house, they're not gonna be gonna beat the market, and they're just gonna lose their money. And

What I don't understand is I guess this is like a naive thing of mind is like the psychology around going to the addiction centers. Cause everybody I knew who was In this space of like your gambling starts out fun, then sort of becomes a little bit unhealthy the way it goes. I feel like zero percent of those people were gonna go voluntarily like go to driver's ed. What I thought you were gonna say is that You can get the companies like unlike the drug industry where like

There's no s there's no corporation that sells heroin, right? That that's not the there's no there's no one percent to target, but DraftKings fan duel, these companies are gonna have a giant target on their back. And they're money printers. And so I thought you were gonna say that They will as a sort of corporate social responsibility, like cover your ass type of thing.

they might sponsor or pay for seats in all these different location like all these different areas and then you can provide the service for free for people. I thought that might be where you were going with that. Do you think that's viable or no? I I'm not to convince that like a for profit and you know, Sam was just talking about these account managers for the whales. Right. Like

I think they want to encourage those people to gamble more. And like they talk about you know, if you read their Ten Ks and Qs, like they have a E S G initiative and they do this for people who are but Yeah. I gotta believe it's like, you know, kind of putting lips or giving this lip service. Like I just you know, it

I g I can't believe they would do that. I you know I think if I'm DraftKings are fan duel. The thing I do is I have if I have a ventures team, I invest in this And so then, you know, I create the problem and then I also benefit from the cure. So uh that's the

You know, the kind of the evil genius corporate way of doing it. But yeah, I don't I don't think they're gonna They're gonna s you know, drive this on their own. I have just one other question for you. It says your friend what uh what What stuff are you really into right now?

Are you like really digging any books, shows? you know, random rabbit holes that you're going down. Is there anything that you're super interested and fascinated by right now? Yeah, you have the free time. I'm pretty lasered in on like use development right now. Right, in education. Like that's where I'm spending all my time. So

There's a great Book called Weapons of Mass Instruction. Uh And it's basically like, you know, it's an aggr I've never I it's like a book it's the only book I describe as aggressive. And it basically

Like talks about like how schools are totally broken. And it's actually by an ex teacher. So that one's I thought was really good that I'm I really like that one. Um Yeah, that's a big area. And the other area I'm spending a lot of time on is I'm talking to lots of professional sports coaches. So um A big part of

Schooling is motivation. And so I've talked to I've gotten into like the Texas Rangers and a couple college football team kind of coaching networks. Um And these guys, they're yeah, mostly guys, they're amazing. Like I do a thirty minute zoom with them and I'm like I wanna run through a wall. after talking to you, right? And and I'm trying to figure out if Would they do for athletes, you could you know, could you

Could you implant them in a school and could they do that same kind of motivating thing for young people in a different domain. What's so good? What do they do on the call that's so awesome? I think what they they're really good at figuring out Wh when they talk about um

you know, young people, which is who they're generally coaching, right? They really like think about What they care about it. You know, the beauty of it is it's actually not very complicated, right? They think about like what does that person care about? So one of them is a coach on a minor league team. And

He's like, listen, that kid doesn't care if we make it to the world series of like Triple A. He's like, That kid wants to get to prose. The pros, right? And so he's like I gotta work on I get everything I do has to ladder up.

For him. to help him get there. And You know, the odds are very low. Right, and so they're very selfless in the sense of like for as the coach

It would actually be better if that kid played his heart out and we won the world series. Of m triple A? But the reality is if he does a really good job, that player, he's actually gonna get called up and they're actually gonna lose them. So Like they've just got this like way of thinking about Um

uh you know, like what motivates people and like how to get into that. And then they think a lot about like the team dynamic really a lot. And I I really have found that Really interesting. And then there's a great book I read about the de La Salle high school football team. So it's like the winningest high school football team in history.

uh it's out in California, I think. And the coach wrote this book. And like half of it's like what drills do the safeties do and stuff, like stuff I don't care about. But there's like An upfront part about leadership and motivation and creating accountability. That I actually think like Anybody in a company should read. Like it is unreal because these kids aren't responsible to

just the coaches or their school, like they feel a really deep sense of responsibility to each other. And I actually think like that's Something we need more of? And I really like There's I think there's a lot of lessons that can be applied from youth development and sports.

to other domains, you know, whether it's corporate life or whether it's a school that we're trying to build. Chasing perfection. You know, the the De La Salle football way or something. I think if you read the first half of the book before they start getting into like you know, what O line drills they do and stuff, it's really, really good. Sounds similar to like uh The score takes care of itself. Is that the Bill Walsh one?

Bill Walshbook. Yeah. So you know, same thing. Super successful football coach. It's a football it's a s sports book, a football book, but it's not at the same time. It's a program building leadership book, actually. And it's an entire philosophy of like focus on the inputs. The outputs will always take care of themselves if you got the inputs right. Yeah. And um And how he kinda turned around a losing program into a winning one. Yeah, I think the other thing he talks about a lot is like subtraction, right? Like which is like you know he's like a lot of teams wanna add new things to they like wanna add new plays. He's like We have three plays on special teams we do. Like that's it. Right. And so they really minimize and like it's actually like if you have young kids, you ever seen those stride bikes?

Yeah. Right. The brilliance of that is they just subtracted petals out. Right. Like it's like and it actually helps kids learn how to ride better. And I don't think people think about subtracting stuff out. They like always want to add. And I actually found like there was a certain genius of how this coach and his team or his coaching staff thought about

simplifying a lot and subtracting complexity out. And so Yeah, there's it's like a very profound book. on many levels, I I just think it's like it's a it's a really good one. So that's another talent code? No. Write that down. That's a good one for you. Um in general you should check out uh my college roommate.

Uh Who's one of my best friends got Trevor Reagan. He has a pretty fascinating story where he was like from a tiny town in Wyoming. And um When I got to Duke, they were like, Your roommate, he's like trying out for the basketball team. So I'm like, sweet, I'm looking out for, you know

A six six black dude. I'm like, that's gonna be my roommate. And instead this five eight you know, white kid from Wyoming shows up and I'm like, You're the guy who's trying out for the team? Like what how is this gonna work? And um He was an incredible basketball player. He was like the best basketball player in Wyoming. His dad his both of his parents were teachers and coaches. And he always just thought, Okay, I'm gonna

Play sports and then I'll go be a teacher and coach too someday. And what he did was when he went back to Wyoming He hosts he started with a summer camp. And he was like, All right, I'm gonna teach basketball And he he also like he was a manager on the Duke basketball team.

Dude, basketball seems probably the w the most, you know, prestigious program in college basketball. So he like took what he learned there, but he was like, You know what? What do I wish I had when I like what would have made me a better player? Because he Almost made the team. He was the last guy cut. And he's kind of a kind of sat with him of like

Could I have done anything differently? I thought I worked super hard. So could I have worked smarter in any way? Was there anything that in my training protocol would have led me to actually make the team versus being the last Final guy who didn't make the cut. 'Cause it killed him to not be on the team. That was his dream. And like

It's like you don't watch that story you don't watch the Rudy movie where you where he doesn't get to play. But that was what happened in his life. It was like damn. That sucks. I didn't even really believe that that was a possible outcome, but it was. And so he When he went back to summer camp he's teaching I don't know, seventh grade girls

And they would be doing a layup drill, but he put a giant T V screen with a Tivo like kind of an instant replay of what they were doing. So'cause he's like, one of the things is You never as a youth player you never get to see yourself. Doing anything. Um like the the the or the feedback loop is there's like a huge gap between when you're playing in the gym to when you finally might one day see like some film of you that then you then you'll be told, Hey, you should do this differently next time.

And then another Three days goes by before you're back in the gym doing that thing. So instead he like shortened the feedback loop. And he started and then he went and studied all these coaches. He went and hung out with Pete Carroll. He went and hung out with the best like He would find that the women's Olympic volleyball team in the US dominates. So he went and studied under that coach to be like, How does he run his program? And he was just like

He'd run camps during the summer, which is only three months, and then nine months out of the year He would just go learn. And I thought it was fascinating. He did that for like, you know, seven years. So now he has this uh He puts out free content. That's like in in this thing called the learner's lab, which is uh basically it's like how the l the science of learning, how do you become a better learner?

And he started it with s with sports, but then he realized like pretty quickly, Oh, this applies to everything, like business. school school, whatever. And he gets brought in by all these sports teams and big companies to give talks to like How do you actually teach people how to learn better? How do you create a a environment? Like basically his theory is almost like If the soil is good.

the plants will grow. And like If you're wondering why your plants aren't growing, have you ever looked at your soil? Maybe your soil's messed up. Like maybe the the setup, the culture, the environment that you're you're setting up here is not gonna lead to that type of growth. And so he's put out a bunch of fascinating stuff that I haven't really heard anybody else do. I uh you should check it out. One of the genius things he did was like Huberman, he went and read all the white papers about learning and motor like motor development and all this stuff.

And then He's like, dude, this is gold. It's just buried in old scientific white paper. That was made by an old white scientist who doesn't know anything about social media or how to get the message out there. So he would go read all these and then he would turn it into like an animated video. And put it up on YouTube. And these videos that seem so niche Can get like a million views because

It's actually interesting content, but it was just stuck in science world, which was not like applicable to where most people go look for information or entertainment. Yeah, I should check out Trevor's stuff. Like he sounds like he's doing sort of God's work there, which is awesome. But yeah, there's a ton of like amazing research about youth development, education, learning that like people just ignore. Like it's like proven stuff. That says, you know, if you want a young person to like learn something, you should quiz them daily. Like it's shown to work, but like

If you talked I've talked to probably seventy or eighty teachers. not a single one can d does it. And part of it is like it's logistically very challenging. So I understand that. But But There's so many things at work, and like we still treat Education very artisanally.

Right. It's like, you know, it's like everybody's an artist. Like, oh, Sam likes teaching history this way and Sean likes teaching it this way and Anan likes teaching it this way. It's like, hey, just go And like do like improv, you know, and instead of being like Oh, what Sam does works, like Sean and Anand, like Follow the script because like the kids love it and like

It works and you can color outside the lines a little bit. But you can't like go rogue and just come up with your own thing, so Yeah, I think I'll check I'll check that out. But yeah, there's a ton of like really smart people who dug into this. We just For whatever reason, we just seem to ignore it. In that Monash Babri interview we just did

he said something, he's like the n like the n something like the neurons in the brain. And normally I'm like, You're an investor, what do you know about the neurons in the brain? But I was at his house and like one whole wall was all just science books. It's like There's like an investing book section, then there's a huge section of just science books, either psychology or biology or physics, whatever it was. And he was just telling me about all these different books he was reading and wh what he liked in each one. And one of the things he was saying was between the ages of what he said, like ten to nineteen or something like that.

Like eighty, ninety percent of the neural connections formed during that time. And it's basically the peak time to specialize. He's like if you look at all the great ones, whether it's like, you know, the great musicians Whether it's Warren Buffett, you know, buying his first stock at age ten. It's like the great ones at every field.

During that key golden period. They begin to like really go deep on an area and become great at that. And not everybody should specialize, but the people who really want to become the outliers and do great Like that is the the golden era. I'm sitting there, I'm like, Oh, I guess uh

I guess I missed the boat. Like I don't know I don't know what I was doing during that time, but it wasn't that. And he's like, Well, you always got your kids, you know, to try. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, I spent eight years in Spanish and like I can say Me llamo Anand Puedo ir al Baño, which is like my name's Anand, where's the bathroom, right? And so like that's a waste of time. For everybody involved, right? It's just no Hablo. Oh my god. Strong H in that hobbling. And don't even you don't even say well you don't speak. You're just like I don't speak. Yeah, wasted potential, wasted time here. And yeah, that neurons thing, the the thing he said about

you know, if somebody has a lemonade stand early in life, like that's a great sort of indicator. Like, yeah, I I gotta believe That's certainly like a sign of somebody who's formidable that is you know, could do great things. Yeah And so yeah, I think we gotta tap into that a lot more. Um, thanks for doing this, dude. Round two. Done.

Cool. Yeah, well uh do you want people to follow you anywhere or get more of you on any uh Any platform? Uh yeah, A Sanwall on Twitter. Or uh my name on LinkedIn. I'm a I'm on LinkedIn.

voice or something, so you know, I don't mean to brag, but that's uh that's my thing. So yeah, follow me. I don't think that's a brag. It is it is a bra. I'm pretty sure it's a little bit more than I'm I'm big on LinkedIn is actually I framed it. I framed my uh I framed my thing. It's uh it's in our bedroom. Ha. Do you make your wife look at that before you go to bed? You realize the prize that you got. Yeah, it's a big it's a big thing. Whenever we get in a fight, I'm like let's go into the room and look at the uh the LinkedIn uh influencer thing I got.

You play the card you're dealt, I suppose. All right. This is this has been fun, man. Thanks. All right. See you. I feel like I can rule the world a no way be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back

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