#137 - The Aftermath of The Combine Idea, The Next Trillion Dollar Industry, Crypto Art Selling For Millions
Okay, Sam, you got a new musical intro for us. Go ahead, hit them with the new intro. All right, ready? All right, that's pretty good.
Oh, come on. So you gotta be like—
so I'm discovering you got more talents than I initially would have given you credit for. You've almost dunked. You can skateboard well. Very well, actually.
I can skateboard great. You've seen me only almost dunk, but I can definitely dunk.
I'll get it. And beatboxing. Okay, what else you got up your sleeve?
I'm the king of being just barely above average at many things and unfortunately not world-class at any.
Uh, yeah, that's all right. That's, uh, you get world class because you can do all those things at an above average level, and few people can do that.
You know what that— you know why I'm so good at all these weird things? It's called being locked in your garage for your entire childhood, living in a garage.
And just—
you should see what I can do on a pogo stick, for real. I can, I can jump on it and throw it and like make it do a flip and grab it and And I could do it. What? Yeah.
Oh geez. Uh, were you that kind of kid who like just break— like broke your arm every 2 years?
Yes, I always had broken arms. I always had— I got stitches in my face. I always have stuff. I can ride a unicycle and juggle while doing it. I can do anything.
So when I was in, uh, 6th or 7th grade, I got cast in a movie very randomly, like a small budget movie. And the guy was like, okay, kind of the casting guy goes, 'Your character is kind of like a skater kid.' And I was like, 'Okay, cool. I don't need to skate though, right? Because I can't skateboard.' And he's like, 'Yeah, that's okay, but it'd be better if you can. We start shooting in a month. Can you just learn?' And he's like, 'But don't get hurt. Don't sue us, okay? Practice in the grass.' I was like, 'You want me to practice skateboarding in the grass?' He's like, 'I don't know, never mind.' So I went outside one day and I practiced skateboarding in the grass, which is not a thing. And I was like, all right, fuck this, they need to change the character.
And so you didn't get it?
I got it. They changed the character to a kid that goes through many phases. So in one scene I'm like a gothic kid, and the next scene I'm like a hip-hop kid, next scene I'm like country, next scene I'm zen. Every time I show up in the movie, I just— I'm doing a different thing in the background kind of thing.
You have an IMDb and you are credited with playing Deepy in Ball and Chain. And Deepu is Where's the Party, Yar? What's Yar?
Yar is like dude. So it's like, dude, where's the party? That's basically what that movie—
oh my gosh, were you really?
Yeah, these are like real small budget, like kind of like it's an American movie. It was released in theaters, but I think I told you this before, but this is how I met Kal Penn, who, you know, is from Harold and Kumar and a bunch of different things. Um, he was my big brother in this movie. In both movies, actually.
Do you have clips of this?
I don't. There's like a DVD somewhere, like a VCD, because that was like what was big back then. So, uh, no, I don't have a copy of these movies. I don't know if there are any copies in existence anymore.
Wow, that's crazy. Um, well, let me, um—
I've never even seen the second movie. I didn't even watch it. I was like, this movie's gonna suck.
Did you get paid?
I got paid, yeah. They kind of have to pay you first, actually, because child actor laws are like pretty strict. So I was always the— the second movie ran into budget issues, but I got paid even even though some of the other, like, adult actors didn't.
Well, God bless you. God bless America. What do you want to talk about today? Do you want to recap on some of the stuff that we've done?
Yeah, do the recap.
Last Wednesday we had Jack on, which was a favorite. I think it had a little following because I got a lot of— I could tell by how many people tweet at me. The week or the day before that, we had Rahul from Superhuman. Yeah, let's start with Superhuman. So I had never met him. 2 minutes into hearing him speak, I would've done anything he said. Are you in the same boat?
Yeah. I was like, why are my legs open right now? What's going on? Yeah. He, he, he's very, yeah, I think he's like a very charismatic kind of well-spoken. He seemed like a character to me. He didn't seem like, I wouldn't say like, oh, he is a well-spoken person. No, it's like, that's like understating how unique the way he spoke was. And I thought that was cool. And then he was like, you know, he's built something. He's built 2 cool things, Reportive and Superhuman. And, um, I liked his frameworks for how he thinks about things. And I've been, I've read his blog before that. So I liked him. I didn't think the episode was that great, but I thought I didn't like either, but I liked him.
Yeah. So the reason I like him is because he has a skill set or an attribute about him that I don't even remotely have. And I'm so envious of people who do. That is that he, um, he seemed incredibly intentional. So he was— he seemed very even keel, very self-aware, and above all that, intentional. He knew what he wanted to get into, what he wanted to do, and he seemed pretty consistent in that. And I envy that because being intentional is actually hard. I would say— I don't— I wouldn't call you not intentional. I wouldn't call you intentional. I don't know. I'd have to think about it. But like, you and I are a little bit similar in that we're like, we see some things like, oh yeah, we're in.
We're like a dog, we just chase the next, you know, smell or sight that we see and we just like go in that direction versus I don't think that that guy is as easily distracted nor like wavers in his behavior. I feel like his behavior is very consistent.
Exactly. And it's, I don't know if consistency is the right word or if intentional is the right word, maybe both, but I envy that and I, uh, I want to be more like that, but He had that for sure. I think it helps that he sold his business. He probably took off for a few years and had time to like— he probably doesn't have too much of a rush for many things, which is, I guess, a little bit easier to be—
I think he said this, which is that like, you know, he's put in the work. He's like, oh, I have a coach, like I have a personal trainer, I have an executive coach, I have a meditation coach. And like, that's easy, a lot of people could try that. But it seemed like he has put in reps that either, you know, just amplified what he already was or like changed what he was. I don't know, I didn't know him until we got on the call. But I would say it was cool and I like seeing that. I have this phrase I say, which is like, you wanna see what a 12 looks like? So in any facet, let's say it's public speaking, it's just really useful to just see somebody who's like incredible at it. Just literally seeing them will change your whole perspective and your bar of what is good, what is great, where are you in the scale? I've tried to do that with many things. And in fact, with a recent project, I brought somebody in and, you know, gave up some economics that I wouldn't normally give up because I was, I had a hunch, I had a belief that my friend, I was like, I think this person's a 12 at executing. Whatever, you know, I give up on the economics of this project, I will gain in the long run just by getting to see a 12 up close and personal. I think that's cool. And I encourage people to like steal that, steal that little framework of like, I think that's great. Once you see a 12, you know, I would say you're this way with maybe it's copywriting. I don't know how I would say it's sort of like, Persuasion, um, and just talking common speak to people in a way that gets them on board with you. I think you're like a 12 at that, and I've seen it whether it's your emails, it's your— even when we were doing this deal for the podcast, it's like you have a way of persuasion that I think is very natural. Or I don't know if it's natural, you worked on a bunch, but like either way, I guess it's very good. It's like way above what I even thought was good. And so now I'm like, oh Now that's what I think of when I go sit down to write a cold email to somebody or whatever, because I've seen a 12 before.
What do you think you are a 12 at?
Honestly, I think my version of a 12 is when somebody in probably a business, but it could be maybe life context, when they bring something up, my on-the-spot improvised answer or question that I ask back to them is really fucking good. So this happens a lot. When we would do our mastermind groups and somebody would be like, oh, you know, here's what's going on in my business, or here's what I'm thinking about. And then there's kind of like a whole bunch of other like really successful people around the table, but nobody knows quite what to say or where to start. And I personally think I'm really good at that. I can take that conversation in a direction where within 15 minutes the other person's going to feel way more clear on what they're doing and way better about what they're doing. And so I would call it like an improvised coaching or something weird like that.
I would agree with that. You're definitely great at that. Do you want to talk real quick about— I think it happened today— our friend of the pod, Andrew Wilkinson? I think he did a SPAC, didn't he?
Did he?
Yeah, I think it started trading today.
Is this the e-commerce one?
Yeah, this guy who we have, his name's Andrew on the podcast, he did a SPAC today. How's it trading? So it's on the T—
the Canadian exchange.
What's it called?
It's the Canadian exchange, something like that, but it looked like some B or C, like TSX Venture Exchange. So is it like an OTC platform?
I don't even know. Like the pink sheets? I don't know what it is. I've never even heard of that.
Uh, okay. Well, we should probably look it up before we talk too much about it.
Congratulations.
Yes. For her. And it was awesome. It was awesome just because it was like lucrative for her, but also like crazy to see how all that happens.
What did you see? Tell me about it. I've never been a part of that.
First of all, the employees only know— I mean, they confirmed that it was happening the next day, I think at like midnight the night before. They all knew it was happening because of the media, but she only knew what was in the media. Second of all, for her shares, we thought it was going to be a home run if it was like $70 a share. The high was $161.
And she's locked up. All employees are locked up for what? Like, uh, 6 months, I think it is.
No, actually they were allowed to sell up to 15% of their stuff the first week in order to pay for, uh, the tax bill.
And did she?
No, we did not.
Oh, nice. Bullish.
I was like, nope. I mean, it's at $130 today and it was, uh, $130 or $160 at, uh, the other day. So I guess technically it would've been smart, but I'm bullish on it.
Yeah. But who the hell knows?
Yeah.
And she's also pretty even-keeled. So was she like, you know, jumping up and down or didn't, you know, didn't really react?
Well, It was a substantial amount of money. Many 7 figures, you know, that's her business as well. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it's crazy what people can earn just being at a company. She made a lot of money and like, she's got like an easy job, not an easy job, but like she didn't have to risk it all to get that money, right?
The risk reward was different.
Yeah, it's nuts. And I always joke with her that that's like the place I was going to work because I was going to work there and I was going to be employee number 200, and I'm like, how much would my shares have been worth, right? Anyway, it was cool to see. I saw it firsthand. I've never experienced anything like that. We were watching live constantly. It's nuts. I mean, do you watch your— so you have some amount of money in Amazon. Do you watch that on a regular basis?
Uh, yeah, I check it first thing every morning. Uh, not that like it matters, like I'm not doing anything with it. I'm not like buying and trading. It's not nothing like that. But I do check it, right? Like when I open up my phone, I swipe over and I see a bunch of different like kind of financial related things, and I just like to know where I'm at for the day and if there's anything like, you know, super in the red that I need to think about or look at. So yeah, I look at it, but not too much, right? It's like buy and hold, right? Like I want to hold all those shares for 10 years, and that's the way I think about it. So it doesn't really matter that I'm checking it every morning, that's just for sport.
We looked at what it ended with on Friday, and then we had to go shopping for our home stuff for our new house And we were like, okay, maybe we'll get the nicer couch, which by the way, right now this COVID thing is nuts. Cause I haven't been buying anything. And I went to the store to buy a couch. It's going to take 3 to 5 months for me to get a couch.
Yeah. That's how it is. It's crazy. Yeah.
Everything is so backed up.
Even in a good time is like 2 months. And so now it's like 4.
It's nuts. Is your supply for all the projects that you have on, is your supply chain completely screwed up?
Um, no, everything is delayed and there were times like You know, when COVID hit China, that like obviously shut down production in China. So any products that were produced in China were slowed down. And then now shipping is just like— the strain is just crazy on shipping. So everything is delayed with the holidays and like all around, like the carriers like FedEx, UPS, they all issued a bunch of notices. So there's actually a bunch of people in the e-commerce world that they sold a bunch of things on Black Friday and like post-Black Friday, like gearing up for Christmas And then UPS and FedEx just hit them with a notice. I was like, hey, like, either your price has gone up by double, triple, whatever it is, or hey, we're only going to take 1,000 orders from you. And like, what do you mean? We have 6,000 pending orders. They're like, yeah, we're sorry, we're only going to take 1,000. And they have to do this to like— sort of like the way that the hospitals can get overrun if COVID goes rampant. That's what's happened to this sort of shipping infrastructure all the way from boats and ports to the, like, last mile carriers.
Yeah, it's nuts. Like, trying to order stuff. I didn't quite understand it. It's been wild. I'm such a hillbilly. I just thought that when I bought a couch, I'm like, yo, like, you have it here, like, in the back. Just go get it. And they're like, no, we gotta, like, make these.
I was like, do I pull my truck up front or what?
And they're like, no. I mean, I didn't know West Elm, like, did made-to-order stuff. I'm like, you guys are just a store. Just give it to me. And they're like, we don't have it. I'm like, you have one right here. Give me this one.
I remember me and Sam went furniture shopping when you were putting the podcast studio together in the Hustle office. And we wanted to go get a very specific item. We're like, we wanna go get bright red, uh, like kind of like lounge chair that we're gonna sit in. And that's gonna make for a great, uh, you know, thumbnail for a video clip. And we went to a bunch of furniture stores and we walk in and the first person we would see who's like, hey, like, you know, how can I help you? Sam would be like, um, I want a bright red sofa. We're trying to buy it like in the next 30 minutes. And then we would get like this incredible service because they're like, oh shit, these guys are ready to buy. Like, these guys are trying to— they put a time limit on how long they're willing to like spend shopping on this thing.
I'm on a mission, man. I get, I get on a mission. Like, I gotta get it done. Um, all right, you want to talk about some ideas? You want to talk about your, uh, little virally, uh, tweet that you had?
Yeah. Uh, okay, so I tweeted this out. I did not expect it to go viral. I hoped it would, but I sort of don't expect anything to. And it did. It's kind of crazy. So I tweeted out this idea that I think we've actually talked about on the podcast months ago. So the idea was— I'll say the idea and then I'll say what happened since I put the idea out, which is really funny. So I put the idea out, which I said, here's a startup idea that can make, I think, $10 million a year in profit. No coding required, just hustle. If someone wants to go do this, like, I'll, I'll invest cash and you do all the work. Here's the idea., and I basically said, I think somebody should create the combine for youth sports. And so if people don't know who the combine is, combine is like for NFL athletes before they get drafted, they go to this place called the combine. It's basically just like kind of this little track and field area where it's like there's a 40-yard dash and you go and you get timed and then they write down your time. Oh, you ran a 4.440. Wow, that's great. Uh, vertical leap, go jump as high as you can. See how, see which mark you can touch. Okay. 36-inch vertical leap. And so there's like 10 tests and you do all 10 tests and then as an athlete you get your scores for all 10 tests and that shows you how you rank against the other athletes. So I've been watching how crazy competitive and how crazy like overparenting is nowadays with youth sports. And so I'll throw kind of like a family member, you know, slightly under the bus here. So my brother-in-law has a bunch of kids and 2 of the boys, they're I think probably like 6 and 8 years old, something like that. And they're in like a competitive travel baseball team, soccer, football, whatever. And they take it like extremely seriously, which is awesome. Like, I wish my parents took sports as seriously as this when I was a kid, but like, they are constantly trying to help them get better. So they'll buy them equipment, they'll get them trainers, they're trying to get them into the better leagues. And the better leagues are like, cool, you need to pay thousands of dollars 'cause we're gonna travel to Arizona for this game and we're gonna go here for this. And this has become this like $20 billion industry a year. Parents are spending $20 billion a year in America on competitive youth sports. And every sport has like a slightly different setup. It'd be great if you could create kind of like a traveling circus that just goes from city to city. And when it pops up in your town, it's basically a place you can go and you can pay to get your— you know, you go to take the SAT for athletes, go take your test and see how you're doing athletically. And so you go get your height, your weight, your body fat, your wingspan, uh, your hand span. You'd go do your 40-yard dash, your push-up test, pull-up test, whatever., and you get a bunch of benchmarks and like, hey, you get a certificate, you get a photo, your data stored in the database that you can share with your team, or you can see how you progress year over year. And it's just like a fun thing to do to go kind of like go through a little athletic obstacle course. Here's how the money would work. And I went through a bunch of details, so I don't know how much you want me to go through it. Yeah.
So let me, let me tell you about something. Do you know what Spark is?
So a bunch of people brought up Spark. They said Spark used to do something like this back in the day.
It was awesome. I did it.
What was it? So it's S-P-A-R-Q.
So let me tell you what SPARQ means. So SPARQ, it's spark with a Q. So S-P-A-R-Q, it stands for something. And so they call it like the SAT for athletes. So I did it as a kid because another odd talent is I was used to be a very fast runner. I ran the 400-meter dash and I was very good at it. I did it in Division I, got a scholarship, and I trained in high school for the SPARQ. And so the SPARQ, if I remember correctly, It's a 40-yard dash. It's a medicine ball throw. It's an agility test, like where you do a 3-cone touch. And then it's a 185-pound bench press as many times as you can. And I don't remember what— and then a vertical and then a broad jump. Is that it?
Uh, yeah, something like that. And so this says 44,000 athletes have gone through Spark and received a Spark rating. The number 1 athlete, let's see, Reggie Bush and Tim Tebow were up there. They're up there. But there's, you know, some random guys that you've never heard of that are just like sick athletes. So some gold medalist decathlete Brian Clay.
Yeah.
Recorded a 1:30, which is insane. Reggie Bush was a 93. Tim Tebow was a 96.92. So that's cool. Yeah. So I had never heard of this, but this sounds like the exact idea from back in the day.
It was awesome. And here's what I did was Velocity Sports was the place that I trained, which is another cool business. Velocity Sports was started by the LSU track coach. And they have dozens of facilities throughout the country. And I would pay— I think I paid $1,500 to train there for a 3-month session.
Spark stands for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, and Quickness.
Yeah. And what you do is you do the Spark test when you show up on day 1 to your baseline, right? You train for 3 months and you test it every 3 or 4 weeks to see how you improve and how you improve and how you improve. And they report it to the colleges or like you can like tell your college what your Spark rating was. Eventually was acquired by Nike, I think. I think it's a great, great business. And Velocity Sports, the gym I went to, must have paid Spark a little bit of money to allow them to do it. It was awesome. I think my opinion, Spark training is what everyone— it's like the type of training everyone should do. It was awesome, right?
This is sort of explosive training.
So I love this business. I think—
so I didn't know about that. Yeah, that was, that was kind of the idea. And so I was like, you know, here's how the economics could work, by the way.
Spark's not around anymore, I don't think. So there's an opportunity here.
A few things have changed, right? And that work in its favor. First, if Spark's not around anymore, great. It'd be worth figuring out why it's not around, right? Maybe there's some fatal flaw with this idea, I don't know. But the second thing is Instagram wasn't around back then. And I think that's a huge component of this. I've gone and done things like Tough Mudder. We did a Spartan race together. Just the like, kind of like going and doing a thing with your friends and kind of getting rough and tough in nature, getting photos at the end with your kind of your medal or your certificate and your headband and whatever. That's like a big part of it because you're basically, not just are you gonna go have the experience, you get to talk about the experience on Instagram or wherever you're kind of getting your social clout. I think that's underrated, right? That's why Museum of Ice Cream works. That's why Tough Mudder works, right? Because they are social and they are photo-worthy opportunities. The second thing I would say that helps is that youth sports today, when you were probably 8 or 9, you probably weren't in that farm system yet. It's starting at like age 5 or 6 today, which sounds crazy. Some people are like, this is horrible. And by the way, that's definitely some of the reaction I got, which is like, you're exploiting children. This is bad for kids. It might work, but like, you're evil for suggesting this.
That's crazy to me, by the way.
So that was one of the reactions. But I think those work in your favor here because you can go downmarket. You're not just for competitive high school athletes. You can go all the way down to the 8, 9-year-old divisions and test them. And then they're gonna get retested every year because they're gonna wanna see how they're growing and how they're getting faster or stronger. So some percentage of them will be repeat customers over time. So I put this out there. The thing got like 2,000 likes, but there's like a whole bunch of replies. So it got half a million impressions and over 100,000 engagements. So this thing kind of sparked— some people thought it was a good idea. Started getting DMs from pro athletes who were like, yo, this is a great idea. I don't want to say all their names. I could say some names, but I don't want anyone like famous, uh, like semi-famous, right? So like, I'll tell you a funny one. You're not probably not going to know him. There's an NBA player, named Matthew Delavedova, who replied to one of the tweets publicly.
Yeah, I know him.
But there's a handful of people who are kind of like in the professional sphere who were like, hey, this is dope. There was like NBA general manager who reached out and was like, hey, this is a great idea. Let's brainstorm. Here's my phone number. We get done with practice today at 5:00. Just call me. He's like, I think we could get the NBA and the NFL on board cosigning this, which is sort of guarantee success. I would invest in this as well. And I actually have a few people in mind who could run this. I was like, dope.
So where's this gonna lead to? This is great. I love this.
So two things happened. One was the way I use Twitter is like how most people use like Snapchat. Like I just send it and I forget it. Like I don't even want all my tweets to be like there for, for people to go see in the future. So when I wrote it, I was like, okay, I'm kind of like done with the idea now. I was like, it's off my chest. I thought this was a good idea. I put it out there in the world. I hope somebody does this. If they do it, here's what I wanted to happen.
Well, that's exactly what we were talking about earlier.
Intentionality, right?
Yeah.
Or being intentional. Mine was not intentional, the way I approached this. But basically what I hoped would happen was that somebody would just see this idea, be like, oh cool, I'm going to go do this. And then as they did it, as a token back to me would just be like, hey, I got my first event planned in this city. We're going to do it. I got 200 registrations. And then if somebody actually got to that point, I'd be like, cool, do you need capital to accelerate this and make this a real thing? Because I'll invest, I'll advise. But just run with it. Like, you don't really need me anymore.
So I put out a follow-up tweet, which was like, so I get this a lot, but you probably get it way more. How many people reach out to you and are like legit, like you would bet on them or you would like wanna be involved? 'Cause the vast, vast, vast majority of people who reach out to me are just jokers.
Yeah, it's the same, same for sure. And they're not like necessarily jokers, but they're like, you know, I wouldn't invest in 'em necessarily. They're just very far from that level you need to be at to like build a successful company. I don't mean to say that as like a knock, it's just like the law of large numbers, right? Like I probably got, I don't know, 250 DMs from this and I would say that like 10 were interesting max.
Well, my thing is not necessarily that the people are or are not worth betting on, but the amount of people who say like, yeah, once I, I'm like, do you realize starting something, that's a full-time job. Like that's your life. Like this is like your career. Whenever people are like, hey, do you wanna go hang out Wednesday at 10:00 AM? I'm like, well, no, I have a job. I have to work. And the amount of people who DM me typically are like, yeah, I'm gonna do this thing. I'm like, okay, do it. And like, well, you know, maybe like one day. I'm like, okay, so like you're not gonna do it, right?
So I'm gonna keep doing this form of like, I don't know, crowdsourcing entrepreneurship where I'm just gonna put out ideas or calls to action. And like, because the thing is, Of those 250 DMs, yeah, maybe only 10 were worth it, but 10 were like worth another conversation. But those 10 are like legit, right? Like they're interesting either connections or people teach me stuff. Like a whole bunch of people said, oh, this won't work for these reasons. And I used to be like arguing with them. No, here's why it will work. But instead I'm like, okay, let me just hear you out and maybe I can learn something that I didn't know, you know, from what you're saying. And most of the time they're like, oh, I tried this, you know, it didn't work. And then I asked them, what did you try?, and it's so completely different from the idea. I'm like, okay, if you can't tell the difference between these two things, then like, you know, I can't really help you. But in terms of where this goes, I basically tweeted out a follow-up, which was like, look, I got too many DMs to go through for this. I'm not gonna go through them. So if you wanna do this, just start. You don't need my permission. You don't need me to pick you. You don't need to set up a call with me to discuss further. I put the whole idea out there. I don't know any more about this than really what I put out there. So, just run with it. And if you do run with it, like, keep me updated. Just be like, hey, I'm doing it.
And I thought it was a great— and I thought that was a good follow-up.
Yeah. So I like this.
Let's talk about one more tweet thing, which is Sam Altman said something that was a great question. I don't have it in front of me, but basically he said, which market is teeny now but will be worth $1 trillion in 10 years? Is that right?
He said, fun game. What tiny/non-existent market today will be a trillion-dollar market in 10 to 20 years? And I actually wrote down some of the interesting things that came out of it. So I'm going to read you some of them. I'm going to do one at a time and you just say like yes, no, I don't know, whatever, whatever your instant reaction is. Okay. I know your reaction to the first one. So Sohail, who's the founder of Mixpanel, said, uh, falling romantically in love with something digital/artificial. Another one, uh, Matt Mazzeo said induced pluripotent stem cells.
I don't know what that is.
I don't know what the fuck.
What does that mean?
I haven't looked it up, but if I remember correctly, this is basically when you take a stem cell and you teach it to be a certain type of cell. So you could train it. You can basically take a stem cell, which is like a blank canvas, and you can get it to become, you know, muscle tissue or heart tissue or brain tissue or whatever. That's cool. By like inducing it. I could be totally wrong, but it's like a pluripotent, I think, means can do many things, much like yourself with skateboarding and running.
It's already a trillion-dollar industry, Matt. Come on, get on the train. No, I don't know anything about that, so I pass.
All right. Ryan Delk, founder of Primer, a little bit biased, said homeschooling.
Yeah, trillion. It already is, isn't it?
Trillion dollar? I don't think so.
Trillion. I mean, that's a really hard number to understand, but homeschooling I think will be way bigger in the future. Yeah. Or, okay, so here's— homeschooling is interesting. So as I've grown older, I've gotten more anti-government. Not in like, I hate the government, but I want to be a little bit more self-reliant than before, right? And me and Sarah were talking about raising kids this week, and I was like, I don't know, and this isn't— I'm not like trying to like get political or anything. I just was thinking myself, I don't really know if I want the government to teach my children to do stuff. Maybe I would want to do it or have our family do it or a private school do it, and they can do exactly what we want them to do because it's private. They don't follow the same rules as the government. And I think that that— I can't decide if that sentiment, it always has been there, but is that growing or not? I don't know.
There's a good chance that homeschooling doesn't mean what it means today, which is like you pull your kid out of school, they're socially isolated at home, and then you as the parent are teaching them, uh, which I think is probably the common definition of homeschooling. I could be wrong, but I think that's like the prototype. And I think that could be very different because like now with COVID for example, everyone's doing these like pods, uh, which is like, yeah, your kid's not going to school. They form a small pod of 4 or 5 kids. We hire a teacher, the teacher makes $100 grand a year, um, and they teach our kids in a very kind of like, you know, very high teacher-to-student ratio where they're doing that either in our house or in the backyard or somewhere like that. That seems much more like realistic to get big to me than homeschooling where the parent does it.
Here's a twist on this, though. The Mormon Church is growing like a virus because like the Mormons, the way they do it is like you get one new person and that person has to go out and preach for 2 years or, you know, like get others to join their tribe. So it's very, very, very viral with the Mormon population growing. They love homeschooling. So maybe it will really will be a trillion-dollar industry. Is Ryan the guy who posted this?
So you're really betting on the Mormons here.
I know that guy, Ryan Delk. He's cool. I think he's Mormon.
Oh, he's Mormon?
Looks like it. I think he's from Utah and he looks like me.
He looks Mormon. Uh, okay, let me give you some other ones. Um, designer babies, which I think is basically gene editing, which I think was like, uh, it was one of the most common things in this lit.
I'm doing it right now. We're doing it right now.
You're doing what? Gene editing?
Yeah, well, I don't know if that's considered, but we have, uh, my family, we have this gene in our family where if you have that genetic or gene, you're going to— the likelihood that you have breast cancer is incredibly high. And so we're freezing our embryos so we know that it won't have that gene.
Oh, wow. I didn't know that. So you're like selecting embryos that don't have it, basically?
Yeah, it's called the BRCA gene. It's— remember how Angelina Jolie got her breasts removed?
No, I didn't know that, but sure.
Well, she did. A lot of women do it preemptively because if you have this gene, I believe it's an 80% chance that you're going to get breast cancer. It's very common amongst, uh, Jewish folks. Oh, wow. And so anyway, we got that done. So now our children aren't gonna have that. So yeah, it's pretty awesome. And they, we are allowed, like, we're able to pick more features, but we're not.
What, what could you pick?
I don't know everything because we like, just were like, no, we don't, we're not gonna pick anything other than that. But you could do, you for sure can do sex and a few more things.
And was it even a discussion of like, we should pick or no, we should pick other things or no? No. Cradle of the super baby.
It wasn't even a discussion, but I, I wanted to do it, but it was a, it was a no-go with Sarah. So we didn't even We weren't even discussing it.
And does this cost a lot of money to do what you did?
Probably $40,000, I think. We didn't have to pay for it. It was a perk of her company.
Holy shit. And you both have to do something, or just like a woman freezing her eggs has to do it?
It's an embryo. So they— I think— I don't want someone listening to this be like, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. To be honest, this is like her project. Like, so I'm kind of going along with the flow. Basically, to give you all a lot of information, my semen and her egg, they're going to put them together and freeze them.
Fertilized.
Yeah. So I have to go to a doctor and I have to come out of the bathroom being very ashamed. Shamed and embarrassed that everyone knows that what I just did.
They should get you a video of the sperm and the egg meeting for the first time. They should capture that on video and charge you an extra 5 grand for that. Um, okay, so let me give you some other ones.
So now that everyone knows my personal life, they know, they know my net worth, they know where I live, they know, uh, but my biggest fears—
dude, you know what's really funny? So I tweeted out this random thing which I, I said, uh, I've moved, uh, 25% of my net worth. I just said I've moved 25% into Bitcoin.
And someone says, how much?
No, I said— nobody asked how much. What happened was, this is like really— it's honestly like embarrassing and random. Um, these random crypto news websites started publishing stories. Oh, Sean Puri, former CEO of Bebo, Twitch senior director, announces that he's moved 25% of his net worth into— so Bitcoin.com publishes this. Decrypt.com publishes this. So then all these random-ass crypto people start following me on Twitter and there's basically two responses. One is like, wow, this is such a sign of things to come.
Oh my God.
The other one is, um, 25%, that's it, you pussy. And so like, like, you know, crypto people are like, dude, you need to be 100%. 25%.
This is so funny for multiple reasons. First, they think that you're smart enough to know what you're talking about, which is nice.
Yeah, exactly. And second of all, they think I'm rich enough for this even is like a notable event. Like, and so then there's a subreddit. So somebody sent me this subreddit, uh, crypto subreddit where they're discussing it. They post every time, like for example, this old, uh, insurance company MassMutual put $100 million into Bitcoin, right? Or, uh, you know, JP Morgan just came out and said about $600 billion could flow into Bitcoin. So they post news articles, they comment on it. So somebody posted this one and they're commenting and then they're like, trying to figure out what is my net worth. They're like, well, senior director is actually not that high of a role at Amazon. I think he's making $1 million max, tops. But then again, he might have been there for a few years and the stock price has gone up. And so they're really trying to figure it out. And I just want to be like, hey guys, guys, guys, I am nowhere near as rich as people think. Somebody was like, the Bitcoin went up like 4 or 5% since I tweeted that. And they're like, by my calculations, he's up $5 million. I was like, no, I didn't put in $5 million, so I'm definitely not up $5 million on 5% here. So that's really embarrassing. And I wish I could just—
But you have that much clout.
I wish I could just retract it all. No, no, no. This is like fake clout. I feel like I lied to people, but I didn't want any of this. I was just saying I'm buying Bitcoin for myself. I didn't try to be like some fucking hater.
Well, you were kind of being a troll a little bit.
But it was true. I did do it, but it's just not that notable. It's notable to me and my friends, not to the industry.
Do they call you a podcast host?
No. And the thing is, I think a lot of people think I was the founder of the original Bebo, which sold for $850 million. So people are like, oh, Bebo sold for $850 million. They don't know that, like, that was Michael and Sochi, and then we bought it back and I was the CEO and we sold for much less, you know, this time. So, so people got it all wrong, but whatever.
Well, let's— what are some more Sam Altman replies?
Okay. Some good ones. Carbon credit trading. So basically, as governments mandate, you know, as we try to like fight climate change. One of the biggest ways we're going to fight climate change is by putting restrictions on how much carbon emissions a company can produce, which is going to cause companies to have to invest in basically carbon offsets and carbon credit trading in a bigger way than they do today. All right. So I like that one. Here's some interesting ones that I think were less obvious. 5-minute cities. We've talked about this, which is like these designer planned communities where everything is, you know, walking within 5 minutes. So not any one would be worth a trillion dollars, but that as a whole could be worth a trillion dollars. I thought that was interesting.
I don't know about that, by the way.
AI-generated video entertainment. So basically, like, AI just creating Netflix movies, basically, just like the way we were showing GPT-3 can create text. Eventually it'll create— already, actually, you could do AI-generated images, videos, and they'll just get better and better. And so AI-generated video entertainment, I thought, was kind of cool, which could also be like personalized, uh, to you.
I buy that, by the way.
Okay. Do you know what NFTs are? No. NFT. NFT is a crypto thing that stands for non-fungible token. So fungible basically is like, like my Bitcoin and your Bitcoin are the, they're essentially the same. There's no difference between any Bitcoin. No, no Bitcoin is worth more than any other Bitcoin, right? That's because Bitcoin is fungible. But then there's non-fungible things, which are basically just like the equivalent of collectibles, right? Trading cards where there's only You know, one trading card is different than another trading card. There are no two same, you know, there could be only n number of the same things. And so some people believe that digital art will be this way. And I kind of started going down this rabbit hole. I'm not ready to come back up for air with findings, but some very interesting shit is going on in the digital art world.
What does that mean exactly? Because when we talked about trading cards the other day, you, me and Jack kind of shit on this, but you were all about these digital sports cards. Tell me about what you think about this.
I wouldn't say I'm all about them, but I thought it was interesting.
You liked it a little bit more than we did. True.
The digital art stuff that's happening is basically someone creates a digital thing. Like, it could be like a small animation. It could just be like a picture that they made in Photoshop or whatever, right? But they put it on the blockchain. And so you know that there's only one of this item. Lets artists create these. I'll show you like a—
but why can't I just screenshot it?
I'll show you a $75 million digital art thing that just sold.
Um, who bought it?
Uh, I don't know. So I was talking to a guy who's in this world Maybe $75 million is an overstatement. I thought it was 7, maybe it's $7.5. I'm not sure. Uh, but basically, okay, here's a million dollar one. So, um, I'm gonna post this in the chat. So a piece of crypto artwork sold for a million dollars of Valentine's Day. It's a digital photo of a red rose sold to a group of 10 collectors who split the cost evenly in cryptocurrency. Uh, the project is called the Forever Rose and blah, blah, blah. I personally think a lot of this stuff is manipulated. Like I think in order to get the hype train going for digital art, I think people are buying these at ridiculously high prices because they either have skin in the game of the underlying platforms that these are on— like OpenSea is a platform that these are on— or they're just like kind of trading it back and forth at these high prices in order to get all their underlying digital art collection to be worth more. Because if people perceive it to be worth a lot, then they might invest as well. Um, so basically there are just little animated graphics or photos that are cryptographically signed, which means, you know, that there's only one of this piece of art and you are the original owner and you hold it authentically. Pomp is really big into digital art, by the way. He thinks he owns quite a bit of digital art and is like, he's talked about how that's, you know, kind of like his big bet that he has coming up. I want to do like a whole full section on this because I'm only scratching the surface. But that was one of the things people brought up as a potential trillion-dollar industry.
I'm interested. I'm interested. I'm interested.
Next one, nuclear fusion, fission. I don't know shit about that. So a couple of clean kind of like technologies, energy or water. Uh, desalination, which is basically taking salt outta water so you can make, make drinkable water outta the ocean. Modular housing. I don't know exactly what the person meant by this, but I think it's like, I love modular homes, changing the way that construction's done.
Modular homes. I'm all about 'em. When I was a kid, my grandparents lived in one. We used to just call it a trailer home. Modular home is the nicer way to put it. Yeah, I think they're cool.
Then the other one was protein design. So that's the last one we'll talk about. Uh, did you, did we already talk about this? The protein folding thing that happened? No. So DeepMind, which is an AI company that Google bought for $500 million, released a thing that said, uh, there, there, every year there's this competition about protein folding. So I'll just do kind of a 30-second nerdy explanation of this. So basically we know about DNA. This is what DNA is. Uh, we know what amino acids are, which are the building blocks of proteins. And then proteins is what actually gets shit done in the body, right? So let's say you want to, a virus wants to, you know, attach to a cell. There are these like protein receptors. Basically, a protein is the thing that allows functions to happen in a, in a human body. It's how like all processes of the body work is proteins working together. But the thing about proteins is even though we know the genetic sequence of the protein, we know what amino acids make it up, we don't know the shape of it. And the shape is super important because the shape is kind of like a lock and key. It's how things connect, it's how they interact. And so unless you know the shape of the protein, you can't edit a protein, you can't create proteins, you can't do anything. And protein folding has been this really hard thing because it's not just like a shape, like a square or triangle. It's like, you know, this 3D super complicated, tangled little knot looking thing. And so for like 20 years, there's been this competition every year that basically any team from anywhere in the world can sign up to join. And what they do is they give you 20 sequences and you have to guess the shape. You have to propose what the folded shape will be, and you would get scored like on a scale of 1 to 100. 100 being the most accurate of how you did. And so for like many years, like the highest score was whatever, let's call it, I think like a 60 or something like that. And nobody really had broken above like 60, 65, something like that for like the last 20 years. And then this year, DeepMind got to like 90, and it was like DeepMind basically broke through. They won the special award for winning the competition. And the way that they broke through was because they basically trained their machine learning algorithms to— on existing folding sequences to learn what a new sequence might fold— look like folded. And so this has big implications because if we can, if we can know how, um, it's like if you know what the code looks like and what it's going to look like when it's folded, then you could just change the code and you'll change the fold. And so that means you can create proteins which can fight diseases, they can make you stronger, faster, whatever, right? Like, this is how we're going to be able to edit the body.
What's this prize?
Aubrey, you try to look this up. So, uh, look up Protein Folding Challenge. I forgot what the name of the competition is, like a 4-letter acronym. It's like a long, long problem. The protein folding problem is what they called it. And nobody had been able to solve this before. I don't know what the monetary prize was.
I think it's low. I actually think the more interesting part is these prizes. I remember when I was a kid, I think this is still around. We had this thing called X Prize.
So I know about the X Prize. So, uh, this guy Peter Diamandis, Diamandis, I don't know how you say his name, and somebody else, they created the X Prize. And there's many types of X Prizes. The first most, or I don't know if this is the first, most popular one I know that got a lot of play was the Lunar X Prize. That's right., and the Lunar X Prize said you win, I think it was $20 million, maybe it was $100 million. I can't remember. Google like matched it and like kind of like upped the ante. Uh, but the Lunar, the Lunar X Prize basically said if any team can achieve this, and they just set a specific benchmark, it's like you gotta get into space at this, get to this, this far off of Earth using XYZ, right? They set out the parameters and then like 20 different teams went and competed for it. Each team kind of invested like $2 million. Or $4 million in like building their thing, trying to win the $20 million prize. And so what ended up happening was you had, you ended up with 20 times $4 million. So you ended up with $80 million got invested to win a $20 million prize. So it was this cool way of like stimulating innovation.
I love these types of prizes. There's this other company that I don't know too much about, but I just know the concept and it's a, it's a billion dollar company, HackerOne. Do you know HackerOne?
I've heard of it and I just know kind of what— there's a coding challenges that, that you win prizes for or something.
I know very little about this, so take everything with this particular segment with a grain of salt, but they issue prizes or money to hacker or to hackers and says like, find the weakness in our website vulnerabilities, find why this can't work, and you get a prize. Abreu's saying there's not a prize, but there's some type of incentive. I think this is so cool. I love these, uh, ideas. It's a publicity stunt., but I actually think that it's one of the best ways in order to, uh, I think it's a really great way to get new innovations.
Yeah, for sure. I think it's great. I actually have said this before. I think somebody should bake this for companies. I think companies try to innovate inside and they're, they're pretty slow and bad at it. But if instead it's sort of like a lot of people start a startup today hoping they get bought by a bigger company and they would love to get like a $5 million payout. And so instead, what if, you know, Facebook or Google or Snapchat or whatever, put out a prize and said, hey, whoever can build the coolest video editing, you know, software wins a $5 million prize. It's sort of like a guaranteed acquisition. So I think somebody should build a platform for companies to be able to put these out, consulting companies and not especially non-innovative industries like insurance companies or whatever to say, hey, if anybody can reduce our fraud rate, here's a dataset. If you can reduce our fraud rate by this amount, whoever gets the best fraud, uh, you know, fraud detection wins a $3 million prize. You know, you get a bunch of cool smart people to go after it. And Abreu's saying that Verizon has spent $10 million on their bounty program, probably through HackerOne, I would assume. So anyways, but the— I was gonna say this DeepMind thing, they're the ones who did the, the Go thing. It was called AlphaGo, where they beat the world's best Go player. They sort of solved the game of Go. Before that, they had solved, you know, chess got solved first, then Go, which is a more complicated game than chess. And now protein folding, their thing is called AlphaFold. It's basically the same kind of group of people working on this, and they're meant to do that. And the other interesting thing that I heard about this was that DeepMind, which got bought for $500 million, I think has contributed. They use DeepMind on Google AdSense to improve ad optimization. And I think it's generated billions of dollars of value for Google already outside of these kind of fun moonshot projects. Because at first I was like, damn, they really bought this $500 million thing.
There's a scientist guy. I forgot his name, but, uh, yeah, just a bunch of really smart AI PhD types.
Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome name.
Yeah, for sure. I love that name. That is one of the coolest names. I love names like Viacom, BlackRock, DeepMind, Palantir. I love these names. I love these names. It's way better than like Casually.
Macho Table.
Yeah. I love names like that. My next company, I'm going to name it like, like some Hatfield Hatfield boss or something like Titanium Boss. Yeah. Do you know Jordan Belfort?
Yeah.
The Wolf of Wall Street. The Wolf of Wall Street. He named his company Stratton Oakmont and someone's like, why'd you name it that? He's like, I don't know. I just made it up.
It's strong as fuck.
It just sounded strong. Like, He's like, it's nothing, it's just two words. There's a few things like that. Um, what's his name? Andrew Warner had a company and he named it like two names, like two men names. He's like, what are those names? He's like, I don't know, I just thought that people would take Anderson more seriously. And then the other name was something other—
that's like, uh, you know, in these TV shows, uh, Gossip Girl, like all the characters that they want to be like rich kids, they're like Blair Waldorf, you know, Nate Archibald, Serena Vanderwoodson. It's like they create these like old money type names. Uh, and so yeah, if I was gonna do like some agency, some consulting thing, I would definitely try to have some powerful, you know, Rockefeller-style name.
Well, this episode is shit, but Bray, let me tell you something about Sean. Are you listening, Bray?
You—
I'm always listening. I want to tell you a text that Sean sent my wife the other day, okay? It said— it was all—
they were about to go down.
They were having— she didn't even tell me. Like, I looked over and I was like, Wait, what are you guys talking about? Like, I saw her giggling. They were having like a massive conversation all about the TV show The Challenge. And like, apparently Sarah texted him saying like, hey, just so you know, the new challenge is on. What did you think?
And then helping a brother out, giving me the heads up.
And then Sean replied with like, okay, here's my take. This person, they're wrong. This other person, they're— something bad's gonna happen. I have to know, what is your opinion about XYZ?
And this like I take reality TV very seriously. I, I am especially The Challenge. The Challenge is, you know, just incredible, incredible show.
It was like, kudos to Anissa for winning.
I've never, uh, met anyone else who watches The Challenge.
I watch it.
So the fact that you and your wife watch it was like mind-blowing to me because I— this was like a secret. I was like a closet fan, right? Because it's such a trashy show that, uh, I never met anyone who watches it.
But that was the whole point of Blab, wasn't it? It was like you wanted to discuss trashy TV with your friends.
Well, I thought that would be one use case for sure. I had seen this thing that, um, what's her name, Maria Menounos or something. She was like this E! Hollywood extra person, like TV host. She created this thing called AfterBuzzTV.
Had you heard of this?
No. I thought this was a great idea. I don't think it ever took off because I think it's only for like hardcore nerds like me on, on TV shows. But basically what she did was she created a YouTube, uh, network where it was as soon as a show was over, they would go on AfterBuzz and they would discuss the show. And they did it for every reality TV show. So Survivor and The Challenge and the Real Housewives and the Kardashians, whatever. And they had basically like kind of like, and all these shows themselves are like D-list, C-list shows. And so then you can get the like former cast members to come on 'cause they ain't doing shit anymore, right? They're still clinging to the fact that they were on like season 33 of Survivor. And so they're like, have a Survivor podcast. So basically they would have them come on and basically talk about the show right afterwards. And I don't know about you, but like for me, whenever I watch any show, Game of Thrones or whatever, when the show ends, like I'm not done. Like the high is just like beginning and I need to like debrief it with somebody, right? And like for the most part, my wife doesn't like the same shitty TV I do. So I go to the internet to be like, all right, Reddit, podcasts, like what do people think about these shows? Let's discuss. So I thought Afterbuzz was a great idea and I was like, oh, this is smart. You put it on YouTube. You're gonna be able to build a big following across all these different little shows, probably cheap to produce. But I don't think it ever really took off. I think Ryan Seacrest was like some investor or something, but I don't think it ever took off.
You know what we use now? And by the way, I like The Challenge too. I'm invested. I think it's a great— it's a great show. By the way, I, I'm almost positive it's one of the most popular shows. I don't know even what the definition of TV is anymore, but it's one of the more watched.
It wins its, uh, its, its time slot on cable, so Again, I went to the Reddit after the episode to discuss, and one of the posts there was the Nielsen charts, and it basically showed, okay, for the 18 to 34 demographic, The Challenge is the number one show on cable during the—
yeah, it's like super watched. I mean, so there's a lot of people who watch it, but, um, not usually smart people.
Like, do you have any other friends who watch this thing? I don't, I don't.
Well, that's not the problem. This is— maybe I do. The thing is, I've never been confident enough to say that I watch it right in public. But no, not all my friends are dorks who don't even have cable. But after the show, that's what we turn to is Reddit. We go to Reddit all the time, right? When I was watching that chess thing about that woman, like the partier orphan girl who won the chess tournament, Queen's Gambit. Yeah, yeah, I loved it. I like immediately went to Reddit and I was like, tell me all about this. Like, who's— who are the real characters? By like who?
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, my wife just uses me. She's watching The Crown, which I don't have any interest in, and she's just like, Oh my God, is this real? Who's that? She just keeps asking me to Google shit. I'm like, yo, I'm leaving the room. Like, not only do I not want to watch the show, I definitely don't want to be your Google bitch during you watching the show to look up every aspect.
Sarah does that with me too. I'm like, Sarah, we have the same amount of knowledge. We've been— we both sat here for 20 minutes. I know what you know. But I was asking her about the Princess Diane stuff. I'm like, wait, who's that guy? Oh, they're not married anymore. Wait, why is— you know what's weird about the monarchy or whatever they call the thing in England? Is why is one person not made the king? What's the Queen Mother mean?
Literally, this is what I was Googling for her yesterday. Why? Why is she called Queen Mother? What is Queen Mother?
Yeah, I'm like, I don't get it. Like, they just skipped over this person. Like, that's weird. What's going on with that?
Also, I'm like, this is the Kardashians of the old school era. Like, I don't care about this family or what they represent.
And that's another point. I'm like, why do you guys care about these people? They have zero power.
But people really care, dude. People really care for some reason. I have no understanding of it, but people really care.
I think they signed the Magna Carta in 1215. Okay. The monarch hasn't had like a say in anything for centuries. I don't know why anyone cares. That's just a history bomb I just dropped. I'm pretty sure that's the exact year the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.
Another Sam pluripotent par just knows, knows about the Magna Carta as well. Sam, do you have 5 minutes extra that we can go over or no? Because I feel like we didn't give the people what they needed in this episode. So I kind of feel like we can give them 2 ideas.
Abreu, did I just impress you by knowing when the Magna Carta was signed? Yeah, I was like, there's no way he got this.
Uh, let's do one of these other ideas. So a couple of, uh, there's a bunch of different things on this list. Pick one that you think people would want.
Uh, let me pull it up. I've just been looking at you the whole time.
These are what they call make goods, where we got to make good because I was just bullshitting about shit for too long.
Okay, Cameo. Did you see this news? So basically Cameo came out, uh, I think Cameo came out and said it, or somebody else came out and said it, that Kevin Malone from The Office— don't know his real name, Brad or something like that— has made over $1 million on Cameo in 2020.
Yeah, you had a funny line about that. You said it's like the new something.
Yeah, you had Gilbert Gottfried call me on my birthday to call me a douchebag.
Um, I didn't tell him to call you that. He just decided to do that. That's the problem with Cameo. You don't know what the fuck they're gonna say. So You know, they go rogue. But, uh, but yeah, so, so that got me thinking. I was like, okay, what's with this Cameo thing? So, so a couple opportunities. One, there's a bunch of countries where Cameo is not popular. And if you're sitting in like Russia or, you know, Indonesia right now, the most braindead idea you could do is create, you know, Cameo for your country right now and just try to win the land grab before Cameo's gonna get there. 'Cause they're gonna go US, Europe, uh, and then India next, I think, is their, their next market. So I think that's just like one idea. Second idea, there's somebody brought this up, I think, uh, his name is Niall. I don't know how you say his name. N-I-A-L-L. He goes, I'm surprised that Disney isn't doing their own version of Cameo where they just take their characters and you just pay to have Elsa say happy birthday to your daughter. And I was like, oh my fucking God, this is this should be a part of Disney Plus. Um, this is a genius idea. You have these characters that can work 24/7, take zero cut, and have incredible brand value with people, especially for the use case of Cameo, which I don't know how other people use it. I use it for like birthday shoutouts and funny goofy stuff. Um, and like, I think that if you had IP like Disney, or you could substitute Disney for like, I don't know, Blizzard, and they could do this with World of Warcraft characters, doesn't matter. Can you just train your characters to basically say these sentences with— get the voice actors to say these sentences and they just have to like be able to shout out a name or whatever, right? That to me was like a just an absolute gold idea for those companies.
Yeah, I, I'm on board with that. I think it's great. We've talked about, uh, virtual or, um, I don't know what you want to call them, fake influencers, right? Um, I think that's wonderful. Love it.
So if you're, if you're, if you go, if you work at Disney Plus or you have a cousin that's has, you know, head of marketing at one of these companies, just tell them to put, uh, Niall's name on this idea because that, I think that's a, that is going to make a lot of money and somebody's going to do it for sure. What are the other sort of cameo ideas that are out there? Do you, do you have any other ideas about like, I guess, what do you make of this as this thing continues to grow?
Well, I think it's great. I've done it many times. I, I did it with Sarah for People on the Challenge. So I had, uh, Nelson, Johnny Bananas.
Oh, Nelson.
I had Nelson say something. I think it's great.
Nelson should pay you. That guy's a clown.
Well, that's your opinion, but I paid him $200 to say what's up. I think that, uh, I think that with this type of business, here's my gut. My gut is that Cameo has won this and I wouldn't actually want to go into the space. I think that these types of marketplaces are absolutely a land grab and that Cameo has like, this is Cameo. It's one of the things, this is one of the rare businesses that the name really matters. I think that name is perfect. It's already become a word. You know what I mean? Like, just get an Uber. Even if you get a Lyft, I wouldn't want to enter this because I think Cameo is going to crush. I think Cameo will be a multi-billion dollar company. They are, they probably are, right?
I don't know if they've reached a billion. Um, and there's a lot of people who are really skeptical of them, by the way, because they're like, you know, this is not like a high repeat purchase, you know, thing that, that people necessarily do. So, you know, there's a lot of question marks about Cameo as well. So I wouldn't, I would not say it's like a no-brainer that it's just like going to win and going to win big. I think they're at like $300 or $400 million valuation or something like that.
I think it's a no-brainer that it's going to be a big business defined as over $500 million company, and it will make hundreds of millions in revenue, probably.
Nice. Uh, okay. I want to tell you about something related. So, uh, this guy DM'd me, this guy Martin, his Twitter handle is @martinglvc. Uh, so he made this thing called onlyfansmetrics.com.
I don't think that really makes sense, uh, but whatever, it's fine. It's pretty interesting. So he's got about 500 OnlyFans models here with their estimates of how much they make. And basically you can go and type someone's name and if they have it, they'll show it. If they don't, they'll request it. So for example, I did it with this girl who's on The Challenge, Kayla, right? Do you remember Kayla from The Challenge? She's like kind of like whatever, it's a hot girl on The Challenge. She's making $133,000 a month on OnlyFans, which is insane, right? That's, you know, Uh, and I believe it because another guy from The Challenge, uh, Wes—
She's on OnlyFans, $133K a month. Bear is also on OnlyFans, and he is about to get kicked off because he uploaded a sex tape of somebody else without their permission.
One of these is mandatory to be nude, but I mean, that's why people pay for more than what you can get on Instagram, right? So First, a few, few numbers. Uh, this guy whose tweet here is not, not actually, I don't think, uh, accurate, but basically OnlyFans does— they do over a billion dollars total revenue including what they pay out to, um, creators. So I think it's, I think it's $2 billion that they pay out. Their take on the whole thing, between $1 and $2 billion, their take is $400 million and their profit is $300 million according to this article that came out from The Information.
And that's actually maybe believable because so companies typically have two, like, what are the two highest costs at a company? Typically employees and marketing. Yes. And I think if you're OnlyFans, you probably can't, like, you can't spend, I don't think they're allowed to advertise on Google. They're probably not able to advertise on Facebook.
The creators advertise, right? The hot girls go advertise, hey, join my OnlyFans. 'Cause they're, it's very much like Twitch. Twitch doesn't spend a ton of money on Facebook ads, right? Because the creators themselves go post everywhere saying, hey, come watch me. And that's a great advertisement because they already have a following on their LinkedIn.
They're listed as having like their company profile says they're between 50 and 200 people and there's 388 employees on LinkedIn who say they work at OnlyFans. So if they— let's say, let's say they have 300 employees times $150,000 per head all in that costs the company, that's only 45— oh wait. That's $45 million in payroll costs and, and in healthcare and things like that.
I think most of their employees are not in the United States also. So I think their costs are lower in general.
But let's just be, let's just be, let's just go on the high end though. $45 million. They probably don't have too many marketing. Yeah, I believe that those numbers could be in the, in the realm of how would you take advantage of this?
So Ben gave me this idea. He goes, I'm surprised that more digital agencies, kind of like social media marketing agencies or whatever, ad agencies, Don't pivot or create an extra arm, which is basically just growth for OnlyFans creators. So what you do is you go to an OnlyFans creator. All right, today, um, you make $30 grand a month or $10 grand a month, whatever it is, but I see that you have a big following. You're just not converting enough people yet. Um, so let's do this. I will work for you. I'll help grow your OnlyFans, but it's like an income share agreement. I get 15% of every, uh, you know, monthly subscriber, every, every $1,000 you make in monthly subscribers. And so it's like an ISA for OnlyFans creators. You basically help them market themselves by either teaching them things or actually putting paid budget behind it, right? Because you're going to say, look, if I put in this much dollars behind this creator targeting their own audience already just on Facebook ads, then I can generate this type of return, or Snapchat ads or whatever. You'd have to find the line of where you can advertise and what you can advertise. But I bet you there is a lot of money to be made just helping these creators earn more money. And so instead of being, you know, agency number 10 million of like helping brands do Facebook ads, you could be agency number one of helping OnlyFans creators make more money.
I think it's awesome. I like that a lot. Do you remember in the like 2010 to 2015, there was these businesses that— what would they do? What— there was a name for the category, and a lot of them failed, but they were called Maker Studio. Maker Studio was one of them.
I would have to look into why those failed. They probably failed because the creators were like, well, why do I need you? But I do actually think that those types of things add a lot of value, and I think they can be done well. That— but that's another category of business that could probably be applied to OnlyFans in some type of capacity. I mean, this is kind of lame, but they're right. But all the houses, the TikTok houses and all that stuff, It totally works. It is so effective. So I like those types of things. I like them a lot. Okay.
In this vein, and I know very little about this, but this is another one I'm going to— I want to do a deep dive on. Do you know who the Nelk Boys are?
Yeah, they're basically 4 guys. Is it 4 guys? I think they got— I don't remember the first platform, maybe YouTube. And they originally just did pranks. Like, for example, a cop would pull them over and they would say, like, why are you driving like that? He was, oh, I just— I have a ton of coke in the back of the car. And the cop would be like, you're telling me you have Coke in your car? Like, put your hands up. And it was Coca-Cola in the car. Or they would drive, like they would drive while drinking. And the cop would be like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm just drinking a beer. And it was a non-alcoholic beer. And so they're just kind of like douchebag, but they're funny.
Yeah. So they, uh, I think they're kind of a very interesting group. They're sort of like, to me, they're like the modern day Jackass in a way. Right? So Jackass grew on the MTV platform, but if you were, if you were doing Jackass today, you know, screw MTV, you don't need MTV, you need TikTok, you need YouTube, you need like Instagram, you need OnlyFans, you need stuff like that, right? Uh, those are the platforms you would grow on.
And I think they like, these guys, by the way, went on Air Force One or something crazy.
They have a lot of power right now. So they're kind of this bro douchey brand. Um, but it works. And they're, they're sort of like, I, I would call them the next Barstool. And so I think they're more popular. So for example, they do these merch drops, um, where they just release, you know, basic-ass hoodie that says like "full send," or, you know, that's their phrase, "full send." And they're always sold out.
I went to the website, you can't buy a thing.
If you just sort of like triangulate between some numbers they've said— they said, you know, during their drops they have 100,000 people on the website trying to buy. 100,000 people on the website trying to buy is one of the most insane like e-commerce numbers you can get to. I think they're doing between $1 and $3 million per drop that they do in merch. And I think, you know, they're spending zero on customer acquisition for that, right? That's just like their own audience who's going and buying shit. In addition, they have something called the Send Club or something like that, which is basically their Girls Gone Wild. So they're also recreating Girls Gone Wild. It's basically like the X-rated videos of their parties that you, uh, can't— they can't post on Instagram and YouTube, and you pay to be a member and you get to watch basically, you know, Girls Gone Wild 2.0. And I'm like, fuck, oh my God, I'm on it, I'm on their site.
It's club.fullsend.com. I'm looking— they're looking up at their traffic on SimilarWeb and it says they have over a million uniques a month. On the club site, club.fullsend.com. It's their Sun Club.
So I really want to invest in the Nelk Boys. So I'm, I'm trying to hunt down— so if anybody out there can introduce me, I would love to write a blank check into the Nelk Boys because I think that they are very smart. And I think that they are— I don't know if they're very smart. What they're doing is very smart, so I assume somebody involved is very smart.
Let's say, let's say it's very effective.
Yeah, exactly. I think it is very effective what they're doing. I think it can be very big. And I think that, yeah, this is a, this is a brand I want to invest in. So I'm trying to find a way into the Nelk Boys. I have no idea how to, how to get them a $500K check, but that's what I want to do is just hand them one. So, so I think these guys are very impressive. They're doing a bunch of different things. I watched a, a livestream of them on Twitch where they were do, they're doing high stakes gambling every night where they basically load like $20,000 into an account on a crypto betting site. And then they bring in celebrities. So they'll have like rappers join them. Yeah.
Yeah.
The one I was watching, Dana White. You know, a kind of notorious gambler, the guy who runs the UFC, joined them and they played blackjack and won $55,000 in 20 minutes, and then they called it quits. I just think that they are very entertaining in a way that's like— it's like Vice Entertainment. And I think that there— people want to watch vices, and I think that these guys are doing a great job of building an audience doing this.
So I think that that would be a maybe a smart bet in terms of making money. I would not invest in them because this is just goes against what I like. Not that I'm saying it—
I'm—
I sound like I'm doing this moral thing and I'm like, no, like, it's not necessarily bad if that's what you're into. I just think that these guys are degenerates and I wouldn't want to be part of it. But at the same time, I definitely watch this stuff because it's impossible not to.
For every schmuck that's investing in an esports team, you should not be doing that, you should have invested in this. Uh, like, if I compare the investments that people have made into 100 Thieves or FaZe Clan and stuff like that, uh, versus this. I think it is— this is such a better bet. And those have these like really frothy valuations that will come crashing down soon enough. And so, so anyways, I think this is really— I think it's really interesting. I never heard of these guys because I'm like, you know, out of touch, and I'm 32 and I have a kid, and like I don't know about what's going on with this stuff. But, uh, Ben was educating me about this, and the more I read, I was like, wow, this is really impressive, the following and the commerce that they're doing.
Okay. But I just found something even more interesting. So if you go to club.fullsend.com, it's their website and they're making a lot of money off of it. I could just look at the traffic and tell, but at the very bottom it says powered by Subify.
Yes.
I Googled Subify and there's very little information about them on the internet. What I think would be interesting that you should do, I'm not investing at the moment, but I think you should do this. It looks like Subify was maybe built just for Logan Paul and just for a handful of YouTubers. I would holler at the Subify people and see what's up with them. It looks like they power Maverick Club, so apparently Logan Paul has a club. They power the Sendboys, and they power— they might power— do they power OnlyFans?
I don't think so, but, um, if they did, that's crazy.
Well, they have their— that logo on their website. I would contact that company maybe and figure out what's going on with them because when I Googled them, there was nothing about them. And that's always interesting.
Yes, I agree. This is sort of like this payment layer tech. Payments is hard, but it is interesting. And it's interesting why they're using them versus anybody else. I wonder if these guys, they go into more gray area businesses probably than Patreon will let you do, or Stripe will let you do, or, you know, whatever else.
I would look into Subify, whatever that is. That is like a bunch of flags went off when I saw that. I'm like These guys are shady. Something's going on. But that's always kind of intriguing, right?
Okay, cool. I think that's, that's good for today.
I think, I think we, uh, we saved it. Did we save it, Abreu? I honestly thought it was good even before the extra stuff.
I thought it was pretty funny.
I thought it was pretty random.
I think we should call it the random episode. I think we should be like, we just ran, talked about a bunch of random stuff this episode.
There was a review, Abreu, on iTunes where they said to bring you on more because they want a third opinion on some things. Do you see what people said about you? Yeah, I think they said I was very smart, very intelligent, more of a brain, something like— we don't know what he looks like, but he's probably really good looking.
Agreed. It's actually me leaving those comments.
Maybe. All right, thank you for listening.
See ya.