#132 - A Simple Email Hack That Generated Millions, The World's Cheapest Billionaire, and A Simple Startup Idea No One Has Done
All right, uh, what up, Sam? We got a Thanksgiving special. Special episode, other people would take the day off, but, um, that's not how we roll.
What's going on?
To be honest, we were like 1 minute away from taking the day off, but Sam said he's got something big to discuss, so I'm excited.
Well, I don't know. I don't want to— it's a little different, but you can't un-hype the hype.
I already, I already hyped it.
Okay, I— so Sean doesn't know about what I'm going to talk about. It's not big, but we'll see if you have anything to say about it. I wanted to talk about a couple things, okay? So I'm really interested in a few things. Family wealth. So there's this book called Family Wealth. Not that I'm even implying that I have family wealth. I'm just— it's just a topic that it like the idea of how someone can have something and pass it down. Like anything that lasts 100 years kind of interests me.
Right. The Parr Dynasty.
Yeah. And so like, I like buildings that last a long time. I'm reading about wealth. I'm also interested in books. Written about business that are already from like crazy successful people who don't care if you read it or not. So like, you know, not like people who get rich writing about getting rich.
Yes.
There's this one book that I came across and it's by a guy that's incredibly fascinating to me and it's called How to Be Rich and it's by J. Paul Getty. You know who that is?
Uh, well, Getty Images. Is that who that is?
No, that was his grandfather. So this is why it's, that's why it's interesting is because Getty Images is a, Getty Images. I don't know what they're worth. They could be worth like $20 billion. They do $1 billion a year in sales. I don't know what that's worth, but it's a— because it's a privately held company.
And I think Getty Images is just a part of it, right? They have like kind of a broader empire.
That's right. That's why it's interesting. So let me tell you the background about the family. So J. Paul Getty died in the '70s, and in the '60s, the '50s and '60s, officially in the '60s, he was the richest man in America. He wasn't quite like the Jeff Bezos, but kinda he didn't have that same— the world didn't view him kind of in the same light. He was known as being a lot more stingy and a lot more greedy, whereas Bezos definitely gets that. But a lot of people are like, yeah, he's so smart, he's brilliant, whatever. He was a little bit different. And it started because Jay Paul— I think people call him Jay Paul or John Paul. I don't actually know what they call him. I call him JP, but yeah, JP Getty, I think. I don't know what like they call him back then. But anyway, his father was an insurance guy who somehow worked his way up and hit it big by buying an oil field for a relatively small amount of money. And it worked out so where the father died with around the equivalent of $100 million. His father died with a net worth of like $10 million, which now is about $100 million. So incredibly wealthy. And before he died, he gave John Paul $10,000, which is about the equivalent of $150K. And John Paul bought an oil field at age 21, which turned into multimillion dollars. And then what he did was he learned Arabic and he was the first kind of American to go over to Saudi Arabia. You know, Saudi Arabia was founded, I think, in the '30s, like the modern-day Saudi Arabia founded in like the '30s, '40s. I believe it's brand new. And JP made buddies with the, with the king. I guess that's the proper title.
The Sheikh.
Okay. I think he's a king. It's a monarchy. I don't know if they call it a king, whatever. Sorry if you're from Saudi Arabia. I'm trying my best. And he spoke Arabic and they're like, oh, this white American speaks Arabic. So he's like trying to be respectful.
Right.
My dad. Yeah. And so he went over and he made these amazing deals and he's one of the first people to go into the Middle East and discover oil. And then he started buying oil companies and eventually bloomed into Getty Oil, which is now out of business. But at the time was like It was the biggest— one of the biggest companies in the world, and he owned 50% of it. So incredibly interesting. But let me explain a few more things. So he was known for being super frugal and a huge asshole. And growing up, he was— he partied. And the rest of his family, like his kids and his grandkids, if you look up what happened to him, like the reason I got interested in this is just the other day, like 2 days ago, his grandson just died. And like, it's kind of like the Kennedys, but worse. All the great— like so many, a dozen plus grandkids and sons have died from drug overdoses. They love getting fucked up and they love drugs. And JP's grandson was kidnapped in Italy and held for ransom for $17 million. They cut off the grandson's ear, sent it to him. He goes— because they said $17 million. He goes, no, not a chance. So they cut off the ear and sent it to him. And he was like, fine, I'll do like, uh, €16.5. I'll do like— he like, he goes, I'll do €2.2. And the reason he came up with that is that's like the tax deductible number for—
oh my God, I always think about that with ransoms. Like, why $17 million? Why not like all the money? Because is there really any amount that the person's not gonna pay?
Of course, like with him, yes. So he like would hang up on the negotiators and he goes, nope, sorry. He was known for being so frugal. And he also had 5 wives with 5 kids in his home. He had huge mansions. He would collect art. But in the home it was all fake art and he would only buy shit that could make money. So he bought art, but he wouldn't keep it in the home and he would not— he would launder his clothes by hand. He would reuse paper all the time. So he was famous for sending you a letter and like only the backside was written for you because the front side was like his note-taking for something else. And he had a payphone in his house and he would yell— one of his wives, he had a handicapped son, I think a blind son. And the wife, the mom would spoil the kid because she felt bad for him. And he would like yell at her like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, you're spending way too much money on this kid.
He was famous for that. O'Brady just posted something, so I'm just going to read it out slower. It's what you said, but it's just the, the details. So when the kidnappers finally reduced their demands to $3 million, Getty agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million, which is the equivalent of $12 million today. This is the maximum that is tax deductible. He then lent his son the remaining $800 grand to get to the $3 million at 4% interest. The grandson was found alive on December 15th.
It's crazy. Like, he was like, this guy was nuts. I believe that every great man is also a bad man. Like, in order to, like, be great, you're going to piss off a lot of people. This guy took that way too far. So I don't agree with a lot he said, but I still find him incredibly fascinating. Super interesting. Very mysterious, polarizing figure.
Sounds like rich in money, broke in wisdom. Like, it sounds like this guy was, like, mentally destitute.
Yeah, he was a real piece of crap. But, you know, there's something you can learn from everyone. And he has this book on called How to Be Rich. And it's interesting because the Gettys— okay. And then the Getty grandson started Getty Images, right? So he was— the grandson was successful. But in general, playing with house money, the— yeah, he was totally. So he definitely started on third base and got a home run or whatever the phrase is. Have you heard that phrase?
He's born on third base? Yeah, I've heard that one, but I don't know about the—
what's the phrase? Oh, no, it's— He was born on third base but thought he hit a triple.
Stole home or something. Okay, yeah, that's a good one.
Something like that. So anyway.
And I love your quote, by the way, the every great man is also a bad man. I love that quote. That's like in my top 5 like life-isms. Like if I was gonna boil it down, like what's the core philosophy? I think that would be in the top 5 of the core philosophy.
Yeah, I don't think I made that up. I mean, someone has said it. I don't know if I— Sure. I think I've used that terminology on my own, but it's a very common idea. Which is like, like, let's say you love Obama. Like, he still had to kill some people, so they definitely didn't like him. So like, everyone hates you.
Although you got to do the 2020 remix to be— make it like politically correct, because it's got to be like, every great day is also a bad day or something. It's true. You're supposed to say every, every great person is also a bad person. Uh, there you go, much better.
Anyway, this guy J— John Paul, it's so fascinating, and I just wanted to bring it up because it's interesting to me, but also I wanted to get your opinion on a few things.
Okay. So first Billy of the Week, I suppose, then goes to John Paul. We should actually do the Billy of the Week. I think I enjoy every time I learn about a new billionaire, I learn something, something interesting. And so, so I think we should do it religiously.
All right. We'll do it next week. Next week, it's going to be Bernie Ecclestone. I think that's how you say his last name. The guy who started Formula One. Google that guy. Go ahead and Google that guy. Look at what he looks like.
Okay. I mean, my—
he's 5'5", I think. With a bowl haircut. Eccles, maybe. I don't even know how to say his last name. I've read his biographies. He's cool. And he has 6-foot-tall smoking hot wives who are 40.
Like a G. He looks like, um, like Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter, but the man version of that.
Yeah, you gotta like look up this guy.
If Dumbledore combined with, with, uh, with her, this is what he would look like.
So that's the one we'll do next week, but JP, what do you think about this guy? Kind of. And you see what he looks like? He looks like scary and like he looks like a miser. Is that the word miser?
He looks like a dork to me. He doesn't look scary. But if I was sitting at a poker table, I would not want to get into hands with this guy. Like, I know this look. This look is the look of a person who, who knows they know more than you about whatever you think you know. And so, so I definitely— I think it's fascinating. I didn't know this story. I only knew Getty Images. I knew they had some family wealth, but I didn't know from what. So I find that interesting. What I really love is, it's actually kind of like while you were talking, I was like, "Okay, this guy just sounds ridiculous." Sounds like, you know, like I said, like wisdom poor, money rich, but that's okay. I think there's still some interesting stuff in there, but the part that always stands out to me is I have this theory about like branding or especially personal branding, which is like a lot of people want to be known as whatever, right? I want to be known as I want to be known as bold. I want to be known as whatever. In this case, I want to be known as frugal. Then this guy is a great example of you don't just say he's frugal. You say that, you know, when his grandson was put up for ransom, he only agreed to play, you know, he offered 10% of what the kidnappers wanted because that was the maximum that was tax deductible that year, right? Like it's the anecdote that gets the person to think, man, this guy's cheap, man, this guy's frugal. And so this, what you told me was like 12 straight anecdotes that painted such a vivid picture picture of this person about being like both like really smart and clever but also really frugal and also like a real asshole without you— you don't even need to say any of those words, but like the stories just tell that story. So like Amazon does a great job of this too, where they were like in the early days it'd be like, you know, they don't buy desks. They would go to the hardware store and get these like doors because they were cheaper than desks, and they would just come in and they would, you know— so if you go into the Amazon office, every desk is a door.
Which by the way, when we started our company, we did that. It's way more expensive to do. Doors cost more expensive than an IKEA table.
Exactly, because it's a PR story, right? So the lesson to learn from this is that you can manufacture these. So I'll just give people a little tip. I did this exercise. I have this exercise called the 3-pillar exercise. I'll do a video on it sometime to explain how it goes. But the short version of it is you write these 3 words, 3 words that you want everybody to know you are, and 1 word that you want them to all know you're not. So Sean is blank blank blank, and he is not blank. And then the test in the game is, can you just tell us, you know, you write 3 little anecdotes under each one, and if you just said those anecdotes, would the person have this conclusion about you, right? So like, for me, I wanted to say that I was bold, right? I was going to a job interview, and so I made this game up, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna make sure that I'm gonna have 5 interviews lined up today with people in this company. When they go and debrief about me, I want them all to say the same things. That guy was blank, blank, and blank, and he is not blank. And so I wrote bold as one of those, one of those blanks. And so I was like, all right, how do you, how do you make someone see that you're bold? How do you make someone believe that you're bold? And so I started looking into my past, like, are there stories of me being bold that I could drop in or, or, you know, mention during the interview that would make them think this, right? And so the one I thought of was when we were doing the sushi rest— we want— we had this idea for a sushi restaurant. Never made a sushi roll in my life, but I was watching TV, watching the Food Network, and I saw this sushi chef on TV and right then and there I Googled him and I cold called him and he's a chef in LA and I pitched him to join our company, right? And like people were like, whoa, that's like a bunch of act, like that's a bold action you took. And so I had like 300 each. And so when you were telling this story, I was just like looking at these anecdotes and if you go to his Wikipedia, it's these same stories that you're talking about. Like he washes all his clothes by hand, right? What does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. It's probably a dumb thing to do. But like, man, for the brand of like rich guy who washes all his clothes by hand himself, Okay, frugal, like emphasized, you know? And so once you start to realize that little hack, that little storytelling hack, like the branding hack, you'll see it everywhere. Anytime a brand is trying to tell you some story, you know that they're just using an anecdote to build up some word that they're trying to like associate with themselves.
I think that's a great exercise. I'm gonna do that later.
Five Guys does this, the burger chain. They say, we have no freezers. All our food is, you know, all our burgers are fresh. We don't even have freezers in the restaurant. And so they say this and like, you know, in reality they just, you know, their supply chain model's a little bit different. It's not that there's that much fresher than anybody else, but they say this so that you think that their burger tastes different than everybody else because it's fresher, right? And so we used to do this with our sushi restaurant. We used to say, you know, all of, uh, we started off saying our salmon is never flash frozen. And then like later, like this, the chef was like, yeah, why do you guys say that? And we're like, because people want fresh fish for sushi. They want it to be like super fresh. And he's like, you know that the freezing is like really critical for salmon. It like kills the bacteria and stuff. Like it's, you should really not serve anything that's not flash frozen. And we were like, oh shit.
Okay. So that's actually a famous copywriting technique. So there's this guy named Joe Sugarman. He's a great copywriter. He's real famous. He's probably in the '70s now. And he wrote a really great ad for, was it Casio? I forget what it was for a watch company and like not an expensive watch, like a $59 watch. And. I think he was one of the first people to use the phrasing space age metal is in this watch and then something like quartz movement. I think it was quartz movement. I could be wrong, but something like this. And I'm almost positive that like that space grade, like I don't think that means that. Not only does it not mean anything, I think all watches like it's like that's like a very normal thing.
Same with—
exactly same with I think it was a quartz movement. Something like that, it's like, well, like they all have that. And he was like, yeah, but like the people don't know that, you know what I mean? Or like if someone's saying like, you know, this is like polarized sunglasses, it's like, yeah, but like every sunglass is polarized, right?
16-hour aged pork or whatever, right?
It's like they're all like that. And so that's like a really good— it's called— it's like based on this idea of the knowledge complex, which is when you're trying to sell something, you have to remember or you have to keep in mind that most people have no idea about the story or like the insight behind this. And so because, you know, you think other people know and you forget that this simple shit is not simple, right?
We had a mentor from college, this guy Dan Ariely, who wrote the book Predictably Irrational. And so we went to him and we were like, hey, we're, you know, you're super smart. We're starting this sushi thing. What do you think are some things we can learn from your experiments? That will teach us about, um, like, that will help us with our sushi chain? He goes, well, first thing is you have fast food sushi, uh, right? People, people don't want— may not want fast food version of sushi. They may look at that very differently than fast food burgers and fries, you know? And so he goes, he goes, I would learn from the wine industry. And we said, what? He goes, wine is just grapes. He goes, but the wine industry will tell you that it's not just grapes. And he was basically saying, like, they built a whole dictionary of terminology.
There's, like, you know, like, certifications you get to be a sommelier.
And there's like all this mystique into what the different types of wines are and why one's more expensive than the other. It's like, how do you charge $6,000 for a bottle of grapes? Because you create this whole lexicon of words and knowledge around what is amazing versus good versus great versus outstanding versus— you know, you create all these like tiers and you have to educate the market first, and then you decide which tier your brand is going to live in. I thought that was pretty fascinating.
I like that. Yeah, and I buy into that as well. So to wrap up Getty here, he was— I think of a lot of words to describe him, a lot of negative words, but the guy was crazy intense, like super intense. Do you think that these people who are the best, so in the field of business, that likely is correlated to who are the wealthiest? Do you know any examples of people who are not intense at all who are up there, or does everyone who you know We might have a couple billionaire friends amongst us, or at least they will be in the next 20 years if just with compounding interest. But I think we probably do have someone in that range.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a handful. So I would say yes, all of them carry an intensity. Some are very vocal and some are, some are not. Some have a lot of ethics and others are like ruthless fucking killers. Like, so I think I've seen differences on that. Like, I've definitely seen a difference in who's willing to like cut their partner's throat versus somebody who's like, never, I'll never do that. That's not a differentiator. But the intensity and the, like, maniacal focus I have seen as, like, I have never seen one who's not. In fact, I've told you about, about Michael Birch, who I worked with at, um, the Idea Lab that he had started called Monkey Inferno. And so Michael had made it rich. He had sold his company for $850 million. So by the time I met him, this was like 4 years, 5 years after that sale. And I was like, this British dude is chill as hell. Like, he, you know, he's funny, he's really like engaging, he's really thoughtful. The work culture was like 9 to 4:30, um, you know, every day. And then Fridays we'd stop at 3 and kind of have our happy hour and like all this shit. And like, he was traveling all the time and he was just very laid back. And so I thought, oh, this is a good example of someone who, you know, I guess you can make it while still being you know, a good dude and not a workaholic and not a, not a super uber intense demanding guy. And then our COO is his sister-in-law Lucinda, and she, she was also the COO when he was doing Bebo, the startup that he had sold. And so I asked her, I was like, was he, you know, the same way during that? She goes, oh no, it was like night and day difference. Basically. She's like, we had to beg him to just come home at night. Like he just wouldn't leave the office. He was a maniac. Like he would just always be thinking about it, always be working on it. And, um, you know, he wasn't hiring people. He was just trying to do it all himself. Like, it was crazy. He worked crazy, crazy, crazy hard. And now I just don't think he does— I just don't think he wants to do that anymore. And to the point where, like, he had, like, a pretty serious surgery 4 months after they sold because of, like, the toll that the stress had put onto his body and, you know, and all that stuff. So even the one example I thought I had found of, like, a not uber intense person, turns out I was totally wrong. And he was— he just now he was in chill mode.
So there's this, um So what I'm about to say will tie exactly into that. And it ties into the premise of this conversation, which was I like reading books of people who they don't really— they don't need to make money off the book. There's this great book called How to Get Rich. Again, it's a really poorly titled name, titled book because it's pretty tacky, but it's by this guy named Felix Dennis who started Maxim, Maxim magazine. But before that, he The Maxim and the music magazines of Britain. You know, he was like a Richard Branson, but more vulgar type of person where he's pretty eclectic and had his hands in a lot of stuff, probably worth $800 million. I think when he died, he did drugs, a lot of drugs, and he died single. And he wrote that he's like, if I could do it all over again, I would have worked my ass off till I was 35. Hopefully I would have made enough money that I could last for a little while and live comfortably. But then— and then I would quit. Because I was like a boxer who was punch drunk. I like, I had to go back every single time. I'm like, he's like, I actually— this guy actually wrote a biography on Muhammad Ali. He was like, I was like that. I like, I should have retired, but I kept going fighting and I just looked like an idiot and I regret it all and it hurt me. And he ended up dying from cancer because he was a big smoker and alcoholic and drug guy. Sometimes I wonder like, what? Should you just grind as hard as you can starting at a young age and hope that you can get something relatively young? Or do you know just that you're gonna be punch drunk and just keep going? You know, like, I think about that sometimes.
So there's a, um, what's it called? There's, there's a, there's two, like, schools of thought. So one is that which is like, you know, you, you hustle really hard at the beginning and then you sort of shift gears as you go. I see that. Like, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, he has a a phrase like this where he's like, in your 20s you work hard for someone else, in your 30s you work really hard for yourself and your own company, in your 40s you invest, and in your 50s you, you give back, or something like that. Like, yeah, some— I don't know the exact chain of events, but it's that idea. And so there's some people that definitely advocate for that. Definitely seen a lot of people who just, you know, you get addicted to the medicine, you can't, you can't get off of it, and, uh, and you just keep going, and there's like a never-ending more. But it does seem like there's like another way, which I think you hear less about these people because they're not extreme athletes. So because they're not extreme, they're not in the news. Because they're not extreme, they don't go for the $8 billion or $80 billion outcome. They go for the like $8 to $18 million to $80 million, you know, over time, get rich slow tactic. And so I think that there are some people who play the game a different way, and their way is basically they work on the stuff that they're interested in. They don't care too much about the money, but they work really hard at it. And because they're interested in it, they become some of the best— they become the best person at that thing, or one of the best. And because they're one of the best, they make money, right? Even the best plumber in the world is a multi-millionaire, right? So like, it doesn't matter which field you go if you can get to the top, just a really good one in a local area, right? I personally think that there's like— the better method is not the, not the like, let me work super, super hard for til I'm 35 and then come to a cold stop and then figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I think that's the extreme athlete path. That's like literally what most athletes do is like they were there, they're, you know, Michael Phelps until they're 33 and then they retire or they're Kobe Bryant and they go until they're 37 and then they, they retire and they have to figure out what the hell life is after that. Personally, that's not the path for me, I've realized. But I do think that for extreme success, it does look like these Olympic-style athletes. Where you are, you devote your whole life, you sacrifice like crazy, you sacrifice your personal life, all that good stuff. Like Elon Musk, he's got what, 5, 6 kids, 3, 4 wives? You know, like, for all his— like, for however much you idolize him in the business realm, for— by most people's definition, he's totally failed in the family realm, right? Uh, you know, sleeps in the office 200 days a year. Like, I don't know if that's life, right? Doesn't seem to look like the healthiest guy, so he's not winning in that area, that front. So I just think that there's like there's an extreme cost to extreme success, and I haven't personally seen outliers from that.
There's, um, uh, Getty in his book, he said, um, I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give back all my millions for one lasting marital success, right?
And like, you know, I'm trying to think, like, even like Warren Buffett, for example, seems like a very even-keeled guy, you know, has had long sustained success. I, I don't— I think he got divorced. I don't think his marriage ended up working out. Which is okay, you know, no harm there. But that's not my goal. My goal is different, so I don't want to follow a blueprint that seems to be leading to that. Doesn't seem like the healthiest dude in the world, but he's got good energy, so, so, you know, that's cool. He's lived a long time, he's got a lot of energy, so I think that's good. I don't know, I'm of the opinion that the extreme, extreme success takes a big toll out of the other areas of your life. That's kind of, it's kind of like the laws of physics. It's like energy is not created or destroyed, it's just transferred. And if you're going to transfer the energy it takes to become like mega, mega, mega successful like that. I'm talking about like billions and up. I definitely know people that have $100 million that live a very balanced life and have, have been able to not— like, they work hard, but they're not like— they're not working 10 times harder than anybody else.
I do too, and I know a lot of people who— so like, well, you're kind of disproving your point.
I'm just saying for the top, the absolute top, like their company is the leader in an important category, they're they're in the billions category on, uh, in terms of wealth. And they're, they're, you know, they have that sort of like— that, that's the top to me.
Well, I want to also acknowledge that like I know people that are hardworking and smart, and I hate when— and I used to do this but I don't anymore— like we have to acknowledge that there's definitely a lottery ticket type of luck thing there for some of them. For sure. For some. For sure. Uh, like I— there's a bunch of people who are like they're gonna crush it no matter what, but they had— they maybe had a little lotto ticket that in one of the— you know, they're playing a ton of different hands, and it's like, well, one of the hands, it just kind of worked in their favor. Like, they likely would have won something in all those hands, but that particular one, it just was kind of magical.
Yes, exactly. I always say the fact that they succeeded was not luck. The amount that they succeeded had a big degree of luck. Like, I sold my company, you're gonna sell your company someday, whatever that outcome is. We have friends— like, like, I could just take Michael's example again, right? Like Sold that company for $850 million. The timing was perfect. Social networking was at its absolute peak. Facebook was too expensive for anyone to buy. MySpace had already sold for $500 million, so they were the only girl left to ask out to the dance. They got a very high bid from a big bidder. That same company a year later might have sold for half the amount or less.
Not to disrespect Michael, that acquisition is considered— that and Mark Cuban's acquisition are considered the two worst acquisitions of all time.
Right, that's not the fault of the seller, that's the fault of the buyer. Yeah, yeah. So, so, but I guess that's what I mean, like, but he would have been successful either way, and he already was actually, had built multiple smaller successes. The first one for like single-digit millions, the second one for a little bit more, and the third one, you know, like it was gonna always be successful. Now, was he always gonna end up kind of in the $800 million category? Like, no, I can't, I can't say that that's true.
Well, uh What do you want to talk about now? I blew— I, I, I don't have much.
I have— okay, so I have a couple of—
well, what I mean is I ran— that was my, uh, that was what I had prepared.
Okay, yeah, no problem. Uh, I saw something cool. I don't know if you saw this, but the guy who started Cruise, this guy Kyle Vogt, put out this video. Did you watch this video that he put out, which is a video of 75 minutes of their Cruise vehicle driving through San Francisco? And it's him talking to Sam Altman, who's the CEO of OpenAI right now and was kind of like the head of Y Combinator. And he's kind of like— I would say he's like probably the number one like young gun of Silicon Valley. Young being relative, like just like kind of like powerful people under 40. I think Sam Altman's probably number one in Silicon Valley. What do you think of that? Is that right? Yeah, maybe, maybe Zuck.
I don't know how old Zuck is, but oh well, you know, You realize Zuck's like 35?
Yeah. So, so, so, okay, Sam Altman's maybe, maybe in the top 5.
Well, he's like not the richest, but he's like got his hands in everything. But give the background of this Kyle guy, cuz he's actually more interesting I think than Sam Altman.
So he actually was the co-founder of, um, uh, or co-founder, I think he, I think he would be considered the co-founder. He was definitely the, the early engineer, the first engineer, uh, at Twitch. And so he helped start Twitch and And he is a brilliant guy. And actually Emmett made a good point about this recently. So somebody said— somebody was saying this like kind of common startup wisdom, which I think is actually true, but there are always exceptions. So some, some guy was like, hey, you know, sometimes when you want to disrupt an industry, you want to be an outsider, right? Like you actually don't want to be from within the industry because then you think just like everybody else in the industry. Sometimes an outsider who doesn't know anything is the best person to disrupt it. I think the guy was kind of making a stance, not saying sometimes, he was like That's usually who does it. And then Emmett made a good point. He goes, you know, for technical products, I actually think it's the exact opposite. I think for technical products, it's the person with deep domain expertise that's actually the best person to build it. He goes, Kyle had been trying to build self-driving cars since he was in high school. Like, Twitch was like a detour for him. And he's like, you know, the timing wasn't right back then, but he had been thinking about this and working on this, fiddling with this for a long time. He was probably one of the 5 people on Earth who should have started a self-driving car company was Kyle. And so he starts Cruise, sells Cruise for $1 billion to GM, like, um, 12 months or something into the journey, 2 years in, something like that. Yeah, before basically there's no, no self-driving cars on the road, right? But like, you know, sells the technology to GM because these big car companies, they're very worried, right? Like, a car company needs self-driving because once cars are self-driving, people don't need to own cars. Once you have self-driving cars everywhere, you'll just push a button, a very cheap Uber Uber will come to you essentially because there's no driver inside, so it's super cheap. You just take it from wherever you want to go to the next spot, then you hop out and it keeps driving around. You're not going to need to have your car and park it. Cars are parked I think 95% of the time doing nothing, just like a depreciating asset that's just idle. So buying a car is a horrible idea. So that's why GM and others are trying to buy their way into self-driving. So anyways, it's been multiple years now, 7 years or something like that, I don't know how long since this company's been around. And so he just released this video, and it's a cool video because they're just like two absolute nerds nerding out.
And if you want to look it up, the guy's name is Kyle— what is it, Vogt?
Yeah, Vogt, or Vogt, I don't know.
V-O-G-T. So Kyle Vogt, and then type in the word Sam Altman, you'll see it.
It's—
I'm watching it now. It's 75 minutes of autonomous driving with Kyle and Sam Altman. This company, I think, is worth like $20 billion under GM. It's worth a ton.
Yeah, I don't know how—
like, they raised funding as a subsidy, right?
They've raised $7 billion or something like that now. By the way, this guy is like one of those total ultra-achiever nuts. Like, he's the one who did that 7 marathons in 7 days in 7 different countries or 7 different continents or something crazy like that, where you basically run a marathon during the day, then you hop on a plane and you fly to the next country, and then you do it again, and you do that for 7 days straight. He did one of those recently, right? So, like, if you're trying to feel bad about your life, look this guy up. But anyways, I love this video, and I only understood, what, 15% of it because I don't know shit about machine learning. I don't know shit about self-driving cars. Like, I don't know the difference between deep learning and, uh, you know, like whatever the hell else, like ultra deep learning and, and any, any other technique that there is. And they're talking about stuff like that, but I just love watching people nerd out about shit. And self-driving is like one of those game changers. It's like a one-way door. Once we walk through it, we'll never go back. And so it's gonna happen in our lifetime. It's one of these, like, like the internet happened in our lifetime. This is gonna be, I think, like I'd say the internet, cell phones, and this. Those are the 3 big ones in our lifetime probably that we will see. I think— check it out, it's crazy how good the car is at self-driving. Now of course these are all demos, and sometimes they kind of like, you know, like cheat a little bit in the demos to make it look good. But man, this thing is impressive.
Do you know this guy Kyle?
I never met him, no.
He has to be like— I find him to be one of the most interesting people there is because I think that like sometimes when I imagine like these like gritty, tough people, like, like, I think of like a tough guy. I think of like a formidable person who I never like, who I don't want to be enemies with. I think of like a tough looking person, right? Like tattoos or like, like, I think of like an MMA fighter or something. And then I see a little, like, I mean, he's not like that dorky looking, but he's like a small, kind looking—
if you told me he sells insurance at a small company in the Midwest, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, like, he doesn't particularly look like a killer.
I mean, like, you know, by the way, I'm surprised people don't make fun of us for this because we always judge when we hear about these remarkable people. We have this like instinctual reaction to their looks, and we talk about it. Everybody has it, but we talk about it. We're like, look at this guy, this guy looks like a fat rich guy. It's like, this guy looks like a, you know, like a dork or whatever. But I'm surprised we don't get called out for this.
Oh, of course, yeah.
When I see that guy, I'm like, yeah, you look like you created Ethereum. Like, you look like the part.
He looks the part. I literally bought a shit ton of Ethereum early on— not super early, but like early enough where right now I'm looking good— because I saw this guy and I heard him talk, and I was like, okay, I didn't understand pretty much any that, but I'm pretty sure this is like the next Zuck. So I'm just going to like place a bet. You know, seems like this guy is— I have a hard time believing this guy is going to fail in life. I think this little super genius who's like really obsessed with cryptocurrency is going to make some shit happen.
Exactly. It's like— and then when I see bros with abs and tattoos who are doing ICOs or whatever those crypto things are called, I'm like, oh no, stay away from that. It don't matter what that person says. They should not look like that. They should be dorks.
And it doesn't take much. You can make money just doing that.
But yes, but this guy, it's so funny because he kind of breaks the mold of what we were talking about earlier of intense. I don't know if he's intense or not. Probably. Yeah, of course he is. But he looks like just a gentle, nice person. And yet I think the word genius is thrown around too much. A person like this definitely has to be genius IQ, genius level at many different things. And I follow him on Instagram or something where he did his marathon in 7 days. Yeah, 7 days.
I'm like 7x7. Yeah.
777. Wow. Like how courageous and bold must this person be in order to do something like, who is crazy enough to think at the age of 28 or however old he was, or probably younger to start a self-driving car. And now like the founders of GM or the CEOs of GM are like, well, Kyle, like, what do you think we should do? It's just like audacious. I think it's the right word. I just, I really, I just love these audacious people.
So he, uh, exactly. I don't know anything about him. Might be, might be smart. Might not be. I mean, obviously he's smart, but I don't know if he's like, a super genius. But what I will say is, not knowing the person, you can learn a lot just by the fact that he took some very interesting swings. Twitch early on was not like a sexy place to go work, right? Uh, Justin.tv was not a sexy place to go work. It wasn't like a clear big market, uh, it wasn't a big company, it wasn't making a ton of money. It wasn't like, you know, a smart person like this can go get any job they want. And to go work at Justin.tv was because it was an interesting challenge, right? It was like doing what they were doing with live video at that time when the infrastructure of the internet was what it was. That took some courage, and it was an interesting swing. It was an interesting swing to be working on. Same thing with self-driving, right? Like Cruise— there wasn't that many self-driving car companies at the time that he started Cruise, and it was an interesting swing. And so I got to give respect because I think that this guy took some really interesting swings. And if I want to do something more— like, if I, if I think about my own career I want to take more interesting swings. I think that's a lesson to learn from this dude.
Yeah, so I have the video on, it's playing in the background. It's, it's definitely amazing. I don't understand how a car can get all the data that this video has. It's pretty amazing. I guess they're using some type of radar or something.
Yeah, so they— the car basically has a combination of camera sensors, LiDAR, which is a long-distance, uh, like radar essentially, and then normal radar. And it has the combination of all three input sources to create essentially like a map of what's going on in the world. And so for self-driving, you need to create a map of what's around you. You need to predict what every— what they call agents— what every other thing around you is going to do in the next like 5 seconds. So you have to make a prediction, and then you have to make a plan for what you're going to do based on that plan, that— based on that prediction. And then you have to do it, do it. Um, and so that's just constantly happening in a car. And so like in the self-driving car world, there's like this religious holy war of like, do you need LiDAR or you not. Everyone thought you needed LiDAR, and then Elon came out and was like, LiDAR is stupid, it's expensive, you don't need it, cameras can do everything. And, uh, so that became a big fork. Almost everybody took the LiDAR path, and Tesla took the camera-only path. And the LiDAR people said camera will never work, and the camera people said LiDAR is a fool's errand. And they were all very vocal about it. And now we're going to see whose technical decision was correct, which is actually very interesting because If you ever read the book, I think it's called PayPal Wars. Have you ever read this book?
I've heard of it.
Great book. I really like this book. It's a book about the founding story of PayPal from one of the guys who was like, I think, employee 15-ish at PayPal. Most people don't know this, but Elon was the CEO of PayPal. He didn't start PayPal, he started X.com. X.com was also trying to be what PayPal was doing, which was like an internet bank basically, and they merged. When they merged, Elon became the CEO. Elon was the CEO for a while, and then when Elon went on vacation, he went on like a 7-day vacation, they had a coup and they basically like kicked him out. Uh, they went to the board and they said, we're not— you know, you need to get rid of Elon now.
And they got rid of Elon because I think he, he like didn't want to sell or something.
No, no, well, in the book at least they talk about it was a technical decision. Again, like, I'm sure there was many factors, a lot of pressure on the company in general, but one of the big things was that there was a technical architecture decision. He wanted to use .NET, which is like this one type of infrastructure, and they all wanted to use this other, like, kind of modern thing. And to this day, they disagree about which was the right choice. Like, they ended up doing the other one. PayPal worked. And Elon's still like, no, like, that would have worked just fine. And so him and Max Levchin kind of had like a huge butting of the heads about that. And then Peter Thiel became the CEO.
So who's right? Like, with this Tesla stuff, I, I'm so uneducated with it, but a lot of people who I speak with say that the, um, that the self-driving Tesla stuff is pretty bad.
There's two ways. There's— again, nobody, nobody knows, right? Nobody knows till you pull it off. Because what a lot of people will say is, yeah, this works in most cases, but most cases is not good enough for self-driving because you're going to kill people if you can't do all cases. And so they'll say, yeah, cameras work except for in bad weather, because when it's rainy and your camera starts fogging up, you need LiDAR, you need radar to be able to, to detect stuff. And so that's like one of the arguments, for example, is that, yeah, camera's good enough most of the time, but most of the time it's not good enough for this thing to really be autonomous. And Tesla says, no, we're going to do it, we're going to do it by the end of this year. Now, they didn't pull it off this year. You know, his timelines are kind of always wrong.
So I have friends that are like always wrong.
They're always wrong. I have friends that are pretty deep in the space, and the opinion has shifted from most people thought Tesla was on a, you know, on a dead man, dead man path, uh, dead-end path. And now Now most people would agree that Tesla is the furthest ahead. I shouldn't say most people agree because it's just a bunch of random opinions, but from what I can tell, a bunch of smart people now agree that Tesla is ahead because they are the ones that have humans driving cars around everywhere, um, collecting all the data. So all the map data, all the city data, all the lanes data. And because a human is driving, they're getting trained, their system is getting trained by— so they, they run in what's called shadow mode. So basically while you're driving a Tesla, self-driving is predicting what it would do., and then the driver's driving. The self-driving is checking based on what the human did, like, oh, human did something different than I would have done, noted. And then the engineers can go like look at that, and those— all those differences get noted. And so a lot of people think Tesla's getting better because they have the most data, and then other people think that Tesla's reckless and, uh, that, you know, Waymo or whoever else has, you know, the better, the better tech. But we'll see, somebody's got to show it.
I definitely want Elon to be wrong some of the time. He's right too often. No person should be right that often.
Yeah, I, I could see that.
And he's become a little too smug for me.
Oh, he's, he's super smart.
I like— I think it's cool to be a shithead sometimes, but he's kind of a— I respect him a lot and I like him a lot. I also think he's a douche.
He was also super wrong about coronavirus, uh, and I think that was like another one he was really, really smug about. And then has proven to be completely wrong, where he was like, oh, it'll be gone by April, and, you know, very just Trumpian, and like, you know, saying the worry about coronavirus is stupid and, uh, stuff like that. And, you know, has been wrong on pretty much all fronts.
And he got it.
Yeah.
Um, we want to keep going?
Yeah, let's do it.
Um, let's do, uh, Brooklyn and—
okay, Brooklyn and tactic. This is just kind of a— this is a tactical one. So this— shout out to people who like operational tactics. So my guy Ben showed me this thing that Brooklyn had done last year. So it's Black Friday, right? Black Friday's in a couple days, biggest e-commerce day of the year. And he showed me this thing that Brooklyn had done, which I thought was pretty cool. And they basically emailed all of their customers and they said— they basically emailed them a whoops email, basically. So it was like, it was a forwarded email from two people inside the company, like the head of marketing to like the junior marketing person. I was like, yeah, "Look, we enabled the code Black Friday 25 for 25% off. Should be ready to go for Black Friday, but it's live now, but we'll announce it on Black Friday," or something like that. And they forward this. So they send an email to the whole user base, and the email is basically these two people replying, and it's kind of like, it looks like, and the subject line's like, you know, re: Black Friday, like as in regarding Black Friday. And so they sent, and then they were like, oh my God, they sent a follow-up like, oh my God, oops, so sorry that that was not supposed to be sent, but like, you know, whatever, we'll honor it. And they get this huge rush and this huge spike in sales because people feel like they got something that they didn't, you know, they weren't supposed to get. And they went and rushed and bought it before it got. And so we, so Ben was like, he shared it with me and we were like, let's try this. So we did this yesterday. And so we did it with my wife's e-commerce store. And so we sent out an email to all the customers.
Did it work?
It worked like a charm, dude. Like, it was the biggest sales day in the company's history. It was awesome. And basically what we did was same, same idea. So sent out a code to— we did it a little bit differently. We sent it out to a small number of people, and then we went and said— and then they posted it on Facebook, like, oh my God, guys, did you— anybody else get this email? And they screenshotted it. And so then we commented on it, like, hey, this was a— this is an error. Like, we told our developer to fix it, but, you know, with Black Friday, he's really busy. Like, it'll get fixed soon, but like Hey ladies, like, I guess in the meantime, you know, go crazy, go shopping. And so people thought, oh my God, this— I wasn't supposed to get this and it's gonna get fixed soon. So we like turbocharged it by adding that, like, this— we were gonna fix this bug today, but like, you know, while it's up there, go ahead. And, uh, and people just—
I'm gonna do that today. I'm gonna do that today.
Yeah, do it. It's gonna work.
You know, they didn't make that up. The first time I saw that was Chubbies. Chubbies did that about 4 years ago. I remember Chubbies did it. Chubbies is like a short company and it was like from their accountant Dave and their accountant Dave was like saying like, you guys, you cannot send this email to everyone. This is gonna bankrupt us.
Right. That's a good one.
I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna like literally right after this, I'm gonna do it.
Perfect. Uh, so I said that's one tactic. Let's see how much time I got.
I got— where do I find that? Did someone—
I'll send you an image of it. It's not like that well talked about. I am, I'm putting up a blog post about it, so I'm gonna talk about it, but this would be great.
How did you format that in your mail?
Provider. I'll show you. Um, we just made it like a plain text email that, um, has the, you know, like when you see a forward email, you can see the trailing email. So we just had the trailing email and then our email, and then it just got sent.
But did you actually like send it to one? Like, did you and your wife talk to each other in Gmail?
No, no, we just like, we just made it look like that. We just took an email like format and, uh, did it. We could have actually emailed it, but we didn't need to. We just like copy-pasted whatever.
And so that must only took a few minutes.
Few minutes, yeah, great. Tens of thousands of dollars, awesome, in a day. It was great.
Yeah, Brooklyn, there it is. That's the one. This is written up in Architectural Digest, which is probably why most people haven't heard of it. I like these little tactics that kind of work once and then they get saturated and then you got to move on to the next one. But I like doing them and sharing them with kind of people who like to use them before they get abused. Okay, I'll stick on—
God, I'm looking at this now. This is like the greatest thing I've ever seen.
So I'll do another e-commerce thing. This is actually gonna be kind of boring, but I think there's an opportunity. So here's a free idea for somebody. You know the website maker Card, card.co?
No, it's like a— or it makes like mobile-friendly websites?
Yeah, it makes single-page kind of which are mobile-friendly. It's like a super simple website builder. So I really like it. I've used this for a bunch of my like random projects. If I want to make my own personal website, I use Card like like to me it's simpler than Webflow, it's simpler than Squarespace. It's like faster and simpler. It can't do everything that everything can do, but I don't need everything. I just need the basics. And Carrd does the basics really, really well. So a couple things. So I've met the founder of this, by the way. I think he's awesome. You know, just a guy living in the Midwest, built this as a side project, started to make some side hustle money, and then just like, it's just grown over time and it's pretty, pretty great business. And so I was, I was looking at for e-commerce. So in e-commerce you, you have these events, like let's say Black Friday, and you wanna make a landing page. Or like you, what do you use for your landing pages? You use like Adobe Spark or some shit like that, right?
No, for landing pages, just WordPress or ClickFunnels.
Yeah, ClickFunnels, etc. Exactly. So most marketers use like ClickFunnels or, you know, there's a whole bunch of different landing page, you know, tools out there.
Unbounce.
Unbounce, exactly.
Instapages. There's a lot of good stuff.
E-commerce, I think, needs— somebody needs to build the ClickFunnels for e-commerce. That is basically, it just connects with your Shopify, so it uses Shopify as the backend. But on the frontend, it lets you really, really easily spin up these one-page, mobile-optimized, basically card for e-commerce. And everyone's gonna be like, oh, that already exists. No, trust me, I tried all of them. They all suck. And there's a difference between something not existing and something not being done well. This is something that's not done well yet. Hard. And see, it's, uh, two R's, C-A-R-R-D.co. So the big ones in this space are like Shogun, uh, Netlify, there's stuff like that, that like is what they call headless commerce, which is basically means your store is made in Shopify, but your front end that the customers see, you can use a bunch of different, you can use a different—
Dude, I've had the same exact problem.
Yes.
I've had this exact same problem. So often do I have this problem. I'm like, I just wanna use Shopify for the backend, but I want to use ClickFunnels to design my pages quickly.
Exactly. And like even ClickFunnels, like, but, but somebody needs to make the, you, the most user-friendly one. And if you wanna see an example, example of what's a really user-friendly one, look at Karde. And like, I think somebody needs to make Karde for e-commerce, and I think that person will print money because every e-commerce site is constantly just trying to do two different things: make ads, send emails— uh, so three things— send emails, make ads, and then make landing pages that actually convert the, the traffic into buyers. And you don't want to make new Shopify templates. It's like way too much work to do that, to like use a different theme and like switch your store. It's like way too complicated.. And so you just need to be able to spin up offer pages, deal pages, sell certain inventory that you're trying to move, launch a new product line, and just make that the focus of that page. Like, it's so simple.
It's so simple. I've had this same problem.
If somebody can truly say, and it's DM me, DM me everything you see that does this, and most of them gonna be like, this is not simple, this is not good. But if, if there actually is one, please send it to me cuz I need it. Uh, this problem is bad.
I've had this exact same problem. I dig it. I totally agree. I use Zapier or Zapier and like WooCommerce and Word. It's like, uh, it's all duct taped together. Same thing. I agree. I would love to use, I don't know why there's no good solutions. I completely agree.
Okay. Last thing that I wanted to do before we go, I don't really know where to go with this, but I'll just say it since we talked about Getty Images. So stock photo, stock sound, stock video websites have done pretty well historically. I just think they're great businesses because the people who use them keep coming back to them. They're like kind of designers or like professionals that like just keep needing to stock stuff. And like, the bigger your kind of database and cert, the better your supply, the more defensible your business is essentially, because you have the biggest repository of stuff. If I want to go find a certain sound or song, I got to go to Pond5 because Pond5 has just the most variety to choose from. So they become like the category leader. AI has kind of changed this, right? So artificial intelligence has kind of changed it. So there's all these little demo projects where it's like, look, this website plays songs that are generated by AI. Like, the song you hear when you refresh this page has never been created before and will never be created again. The AI is just making up songs, and they're actually like pretty good.
And what's it called?
Uh, the song one, these are little demo projects. But like, here's another one for faces. There's thispersondoesnotexist.com.
Oh, I've seen that.
That's great. It's basically like, hey, you need a stock photo of a person? Look, this is an AI-generated person. This is not a real person, but it looks exactly like a real person. If you just go to thispersondoesnotexist.com, I love that, right? But it got me thinking like, dude, this means that somebody can basically disrupt all the stocks, the stock websites, because you can just programmatically generate anything anybody searches for. You can create— you can have the computer basically make 500 variants of whatever they search for based on their keywords, and then they'll pick from them, and then you're like, cool. Those are all saved. And like, you can create like a huge database of stock, whatever— images, icons, sounds, videos, whatever it is. And you can programmatically generate an AI-based stock website, and you don't have to pay anything to the photographers, you don't have to pay anything to the video makers. So your margins are going to be way better because you have, you have no, uh, supply-side fees to, to, to get the content. So I think there's something interesting there.
I actually, I agree that it's awesome, but I actually think it would be a shit business because there's no Now, maybe because everybody can do it now, there's no defensibility.
Like, the only defensibility is like, do customers know you and are you high up in search? You know, like, maybe that's right, the defensibility at this point. But there's— I don't know, there's something there. Like, the technology can now do a thing it couldn't do before, so that means there's businesses to be made.
I would totally not want to be— at first it's like, yeah, it's awesome, I'm into it. Now I'm like, oh, I would never want to start that because it's like starting Alperen and when there's Taboola and they both do the same thing, it's a race to the bottom to see who's just going to make prices the lowest, and then they got to merge.
Yeah, I think still the customer relationship matters the most. Um, so like that is a problem, but I don't know, there's— I think there's something there. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I've been thinking about these stock websites a lot because I think they're—
well, we talked about it a lot. I've, I've always said I liked stock photos. We talked about Getty Images. We, in the past, we've talked about, uh, not Flickr, but what's that one? It started by a guy in New York who's like iStockphoto, or no, he like, uh, owns part of the Knicks now, or they like— I forget his name. John's— his name's John Oranger, I think, right?
Okay, I don't know what that is.
It's, uh, Shutterstock.
Shutterstock. Okay, yeah, yeah. So these have been great businesses historically. Maybe now they're not gonna be as great because you can get disrupted by this sort of thing. I've also been thinking about like, where do you need stock stuff that's not this? So there was a recent one, uh, video, uh, well, video, there's a few, like, but I'm thinking like kind of even more on the edge. So let me find this company that I DM'd the founder and I was like, yo, I gotta invest in this. So his name is Alban, and, uh, Sketchfab is the name of the company. Have you seen Sketchfab?
Yes, I've used it a bunch of times.
So it's, it's a platform where you can publish, uh, 3D models. So 3D— if you go to their website, the first thing you see is like this Nike shoe that's like, you can rotate it in all directions. It like looks awesome, it looks realistic. And this is like a rendering. And so people can— 3D makers can upload their stuff. Like, here, I made a door. I made a table that you can use in your whatever, and you could buy and sell them. So it's a marketplace. And their traffic has been growing. This is like a very good company, I believe. And so I'm trying to invest in this, but I think that this is like— and they're going to be the category leader of this. And there's the funny tweet was like somebody showed that Google tried to like compete with them and Amazon tried to compete with them. And like if you search for like common things like Tesla or a car on both of those engines, the Google one shows like zero results and the Sketchfab one shows like 300. Right? Like, they're just like dominating this market right now. And so I think there's, there's some niche things, there's some niche things that are for different types of stock items that are like not just photos and sounds, but I don't know, 3D objects is a good one.
So they've raised, uh, $8 million, $9 million. Are they making any money?
I believe they're profitable as of, as of now. I believe that was in the— I think that was in the tweet. I might be wrong.
That's a great one. That's such a great one. Yeah, that's great. I'm 100% about to go do that email thing.
All right, let me know how it goes, and then, uh, yeah, we'll swap notes. Okay, we're out of here.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. If you're not in America, then happy Wednesday or Thursday or whichever day you're listening to this. Thank you.
Yeah, if you're not in America, go buy some mac and cheese and mashed potatoes and eat them. Uh, it's, it's allowed.
Yes, it is. All right, see you all.