#143 with Jeremy Cai of Italic - Influencer Coffee Making Millions, What Cold Chain Is and Why It's Booming, And Tons of Ideas

Good.

All right, yeah, I'm recording on my side. Let's do it.

Jeremy, um, do you know Sean?

Yeah, funny story, Sean was one of my role models back in college.

Um, What? Look at me now.

Wait, why? Uh, so, so I went to college, uh, in the small school called Babson in, in Boston. And, um, and, you know, most of the people there eventually end up in like finance, but the, the main shtick of the college is like it's supposed to be number one for entrepreneurship. A lot of kids were like really into that, um, and, uh, and around Boston we like organized a trip to San Francisco, visited a bunch of tech companies. Um, it's back in like 20 I think winter 2013 or 2014, and, um, and Monkey Inferno and, uh, and, uh, Bibo. Like, you know, Sean was this like really impressive guy who we, we visited, and the office was spectacular. So, um, it's mostly just the office, also Sean.

But like, I, I think, I think we've mentioned that office a little bit, but this is how I actually met Sean as well. And I, let's— I don't care if Sean shouldn't describe this because it was kind of his, but he had this office, Jeremy, that was— it was called Monkey Inferno. It could have housed or, you know, probably 50 people could have worked there if they wanted to.

More, maybe more.

It's really impressive. If I like— they had an espresso machine. They had, I think, a cook that would come every day, like a professional kitchen. It had tables that looked— it had a table that was maybe 15 feet wide and it looked as if you cut down a Yosemite tree and turned it into a table. Like it looked like a $200,000 table.

The worst part was I thought that was every startup. So, so I was like, oh man, these guys are living the dream, like working in this dope office. And, you know, and then reality hits when you actually move here. It's like, oh, that is, that is like one of a million.

So, Sean, do you think that that place costs more than $2 million to decorate?

No, no, that's a little bit much, but we got lucky because, you know, my main investor and the guy who actually started the lab, he owned the building. So first, he was the landlord. It's not like we were paying some crazy rent, you know, to some landlord. So he had bought this building in 2008, 2009, right after the real estate crash. So he scooped it up for super cheap, something like, I don't know, like a couple million bucks. I think he got this building that was at the time, 7 different like lofts, like apartment lofts, and he just smashed down the walls and combined them into a giant live/work space. And he left one loft, so there's actually an apartment at the top. So it's 3 stories of office, like office floors, but we only use the top floor for desks. The second floor we turned into like ping pong, like the classic, you know, stereotypical stupid startup blowing money thing. It's like ping pong table, snack room, We created a weight room in there, like, to exercise in. The third floor was wherever his desk is, and the fourth floor was just this loft, this apartment where you could just crash in if you stayed late. And so my first year there, I slept in that apartment 200 days out of the 365 of the year. It was basically my house.

Uh, Jeremy, yeah, I mean, like, this office is amazing. It also had, like, a Mac I computer, like, the first Mac.

Right. I remember I picked up a coaster once. So the story is, so Michael and Xochitl Birch owned the building. They started the Lab. They had had a ton of success, so they wanted to work in like their dream environment. So they built their dream environment, which most entrepreneurs can't afford to do. They owned the building. They did the renovation. They had this one designer, this guy Ken Folk, who is like this like kind of designer to the stars type of guy. And he's like wild. Like, like you have art behind you, Sam. This guy would come in every 2 months and just rotate the art. So we would come into the office one day and like all the art had changed, but you wouldn't know cause they're the same position, but it's just a different picture in there. And he was just like an elf that would like turn over the office with new shit all the time. And I was like, are we paying for this? What's going on? And I remember picking up a coaster and it said $700 on a sticker under the coaster, still on there.

For— and do you think it was $700 for one coaster?

No, I think it was probably the rack, this is the stack of 6 or whatever. But I was like, $700? And, uh, you know, that was crazy to me. Like, it had mirrors that were one-way mirrors. So you would go to the restroom, and when you would look out the window, they said the mirror, the wall of the restroom, it looked like everybody could see you peeing. But it was actually a one-way mirror. And when they looked at you, they just saw a mirror. They couldn't see you peeing.

So we got— I want to— we have to ask Jeremy who he is and what he does. But before we get there, I do want to say one thing to you, Sean. Yesterday, I foster— I began fostering a dog. And I just want to make the announcement that if Time magazine decides to honor me with Person of the Year because I'm doing this, you accept? I'll accept. So if anyone needs a dog, follow me on Twitter. I got to find this dog a home.

Is this stray? Like you just took it in?

No, I like signed up. I'm just being a saint that, you know, whatever. I'm just— I'm an angel. So I just want everyone to know that.

What are you covering up for? What did you do that made you want to go out and do a good deed?

Just, I'm just a, I'm just a saint. So follow me on Twitter and someone would come adopt this dog. Jeremy, who are you?

Yeah, I am the founder and CEO of a company called Italic and also a co-founder with my girlfriend of a company called Not Pot, both of which are companies in e-com. So happy to dive into either and share more.

And that's notpot.com, not pot like weed.

It is literally not pot. It is a— it's an American— I usually say it's an American wellness brand, but yes, it's a CBD brand. It's been around for—

No, but I just mean, how do you spell it? P-O-T, right?

N-O-T-P-O-T. So not pot.

Great name, by the way. Was that the first name that came to you, or—

I mean, I can't take credit for any of the creative. That's all Katie. She's the genius there. But Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, that's my day-to-day.

And then Italic, we've talked about before, uh, amazing company. I believe— I don't know if we've signed the papers yet— I believe I'm an investor officially in the company at some point. Uh, I think it's an amazing concept. You guys basically— and tell me if I get this wrong, I might butcher it— you guys basically have, um, high-end kind of premium goods. So it could be bags, jackets, scarves, a whole bunch of different SKUs. That are the same manufacturers that do, you know, production for Gucci and Prada and like all the big brands. And basically you offer those same quality products without the brand name label, and therefore almost like at factory pricing. So you become an Italic member. As a member, you get access to this like sort of factory pricing of premium goods if you want quality but you don't want to— you don't want to overpay 10x for the label.

Essentially. Yep, exactly. That's exactly right. So, um, so yeah, and, and, uh, to anyone who, uh, we've— okay, for what it's worth, we've never done this before, so this is the first time we're ever doing it. Like, for anyone who wants to try it out, I did make a code, uh, it's MFMPOD, I think, and you get a free, uh, year, which is normally $120 for a membership. I don't— I actually don't even know, like, how big this podcast is, so I hope I didn't just shoot myself.

I just break your business.

MFPod.

MFMPOD. Uh, Yeah.

So it's italic.com/mfmpod.

Jeremy, I'm a customer of yours. I'm a paying member. I wish I would have been able to use this. I own your knives and a coat.

Oh, thank you. Well, thanks. Thanks for supporting us. I, you know, will promise to keep supporting you there. But yeah, I mean, the idea is basically, you know, I think when most people start brands or companies in e-com, like you normally start, you could be— if you're a venture type of founder, you're like, okay, you're two MBAs and you're like, okay, I'm gonna sell XYZ online because it's a big market. Or you're like a lifestyle brand, you want to kind of bootstrap this up. But I think for, for italic, really the goal is to kind of build the suite of tools and technology to empower manufacturers to become merchants of their own. And italic obviously, you know, does well by kind of building the pipes and the rails to kind of provide access to a global market. But to a customer, it's like a killer value prop, right? You're getting high-quality products from the same factories as these really premium legacy heritage brands. And it's well-designed, you know, it's, you know that they're quality goods, but we're offering them at prices that are like 60, 70, 80% lower than what brands do. And then we monetize through, you know, to your point, the membership.

So it's like the Costco model.

Exactly, right.

And how big's the business?

It's pretty, I mean, we started about 2 years ago and we just launched the membership. So we just crossed like the 10,000 member mark. Things are pretty good. Like most members, you know, I think in e-com also nowadays you typically see like one of two things if you want to hopefully make it. And it's like you either have to be profitable on first purchase or hopefully you have enough replenishment or frequency of use to come back. And really the goal with Italki, and also I think most of the times like you had, there was this narrative of like, hey, we're going to start in this one category, like raise a whole bunch of money to capture it and then hopefully like raise more money to enter into new verticals and that almost never works. So it was important for us to also start pretty horizontal from day one so we didn't get pigeonholed into one category of use. So yeah, people are spending quite a bit. It's typically right now we're about one order a month per member and members are getting to like $600, $700 of spend in the first 6 months. So it's been— That's kind of amazing. Yeah, it's been a good start.

Dude, I know successful e-com brands that have half those economics, so I think that's a very solid place to be.

So I want to ask you about that. That's what I want to ask you, which is like to name names. But I just had a quick question, which is how old are you?

I'm 25.

Wow. Yeah. Prepare to feel bad, Sam.

I feel old now. I don't know. I've been—

No, you look young and you— I mean, you speak maturely, but you definitely look young. It's very impressive.

So, so Jeremy, we brought you in and I believe, uh, I believe Abreyu gave you the context of the pod. I don't know if you listen to the pod, but, um, the context of the pod is we basically shoot the shit and brainstorm, uh, you know, business ideas as well as just cool stuff we're seeing or businesses that most people haven't heard about that we can kind of break down and walk through like why that business is really interesting. And so, uh, I don't know, did Abreyu give you that context or are you surprised to hear me say that?

I have a whole list of ideas to go through with you. I had to clear them with Katie, who wants to do— like, Katie's my girlfriend, uh, before. So a couple of these I'm like, all right, you can't say that because I want to do that. But, uh, I have a big—

you know, I— are you actually afraid of that? Because I feel like, you know, we— Sean and I have had a handful of people execute on our ideas. We had one guy create a newsletter that we had really kind of went deep on, and he sold it for maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, within a few months. Yeah.

We've done it a few times, but in general, I would say the ratio of ideas to execution is quite low.

No, I, I mean, I totally, I agree with you there for sure. I, in fact, I think, um, I think Trung had mentioned Italic like as a feature, which I'm super appreciative of, and it trends, um, I think newsletter a while ago, but, or it was, I think it was a Hustle newsletter, but, um, and, and then in there at the bottom, I think he asked like, okay, put 2 ideas, and like, I got I counted, I had at least 40 people reach out about one of them. And I didn't expect that, like, never happens. So I do think people do execute. I think the percentage, to your point, is like very low. But also I think, you know, in college, like, or at least like the older you get in tech, at least I feel like the more you do value good ideas. I think in the beginning it's like ideas are a dime a dozen and all that matters is execution, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know, I do think like, hey, you could be setting down a path for 5, 10 years of your life and if it's not a good idea, you kind of just wasted it. You didn't waste it, you learned a lot, but it could have been better if you did spend a little bit more time on the idea side. So I do think ideas are valuable.

So let's pop in one idea. So let's take one idea off your list and let's see what we're working with. Give me like a B+ idea. Don't give me an A idea yet. I'm not ready for the A. Warm me up with a B to B+.

All right. Okay, so I'm going to pull up my list right now. Okay. I've got— so, oh, by the way, before I got in, like, I think the one thing I was curious about to hear is like, is most of your audience kind of interested in like building venture-backed businesses?

Like, we talk about it, you know, we talk about everything. We have a lot of people like the venture-backed guys. They'll hear a story of a YouTuber making $3 million a year and they're like, that is awesome.

They're like, whoa, I got to start a YouTube channel.

And then the bootstrap guys who have a business that makes $800 grand and they pay themselves $100,000, they love it because Sean and I will talk about someone who did the X, Y, and Z. Now it's like $100 million a year. No, no.

You know why they love it? Because we'll be like, yeah, this business, they just got valued at $150 million. They're doing $7 million in revenue. And then there's some guy with like an elevator, you know, repair business who's like, We do $14 million. Does that mean we're valued at $300 million? And it's like they're like part angry, part curious about like what the fuck's going on with these venture-backed companies. So there's definitely interest on both sides.

You see the transition once in a while though, I think, uh, you know, between the two, you know, with like— anyways, I'll, I'll get— so one of the, um, one of the ideas I jotted down like at the start of COVID um, when people started staying home a lot was, um, this idea for a subscription box and, um, And I think, you know, subscription boxes, I think nowadays have like a bad rep, you know, after companies like Blue Apron and whatnot. Um, but, uh, but I think for this one it could be a niche. Um, there's a huge rise in interest in, um, kind of home cooking. So the idea was a subscription bread of the month club. So make your own bread, we send you the ingredients, you call it Doughy, Dough Girl, Dough Daddy, Yeast Club, you know, whatever.

Um, I love that you came with the names. I like Dough Daddy.

That was a winner. Yeah, right.

Hold on, let me go to— let me go to GoDaddy real quick and see if I can snatch that. I don't care what my product is, the next domain is gonna be DohDaddy.

Do you know anyone who runs a box?

Yeah, there are some that like have really flown under the radar and have like exploded. Like what? Uh, I mean, I, I think the, the best example I would just share is like, you know, FabFitFun is like this company that I think venture investors have overlooked for a long time now. Um, and, uh, and I think it's just like You know, it's very consistent compounding growth. They've, this year specifically, they really exploded, I think, with COVID So can I give you the background or what I know about FabFitFun?

And you could, you can kind of fill in the blanks. So FabFitFun, I researched them a bit because, so my business is The Hustle, we're an email business, or it starts, it started that way. I think FabFitFun also started that way. So I think it was they gave fitness and beauty-related tips to young women via an email, right? So they built that up to like tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, and they go, all right, well, let's make money in a different way than advertising. And they launched this box. And I think they've been around for around 10 years, right? And they're based out of LA. I think they raised a little bit of money to start, but not, not a significant amount. And they have since grown it to something like Is it— they have 200,000 subscribers or more?

I don't remember the exact, um, number of subscribers, but like top-line-wise, they're in hundreds of millions.

Um, yes, and they send a quarterly box, right?

That's right. Yep, yep. And, and the interesting thing that they've done, and I think, you know, we've thought about a lot as well, is they've created lock-in, you know, post-purchase. So right now, I think that the nuance with subscription, um, businesses is oftentimes, uh, there's a number of types of subscriptions, but like oftentimes the product is the subscription. So like for Spotify, for example, when you pay the subscription, like you are getting Spotify, you are getting access to Spotify and that's the product. You don't have to pay additional. Same with FabFitFun, although they do upsell you. I think what we've seen with FabFitFun and even Stitch Fix as well, it's like they want to move towards one-time purchases that go outside of subscription frequency, which is always like, you know, the grass is always greener. And then the flip side is like for, you know, companies that are more transactional or like one-time purchase, it's how do we layer on more frequency of use, whether that's a subscription box or not. So how has FabFitFun done that?

Do you think? Like, what can I learn from them?

Well, what they've done, you know, I think the common trope is like, you know, if you're a media business, you should be doing e-com, and if you're an e-com business, you should be doing media. And like, frankly, that like 9 times out of 10, that like never works. It's right. And I would actually go as far as saying it's much harder to do the second where you're e-com and you're trying to build media. But I do think FabFitFun has done that, you know, in an interesting way. Like post-purchase, you get access to a community that actually like retains you. If you try to turn the locks, like, people will post like, I'm thinking about canceling, and people will actively say like, hey, don't cancel. Like, here's why I'm still a member.

But what's the— what's the— like, a good community is like a good cult. Yeah. Which means you have like a belief system. Yeah. Like cults all have like an identifiable leader. They have like an us versus them mentality. They have a unified belief. They have a series of rituals that you typically have to do. And they're inclusive. What is the belief system that all— like, we have this thing called Trends. It's all— it has like this entrepreneurial thing. What's like the us versus them mentality?

Well, I think when it comes to like— well, I think in e-com you can either sell, you know, one of, I guess, like one of three things. And like, one is, you know, you can sell the concept of value and it's like, hey, you're getting a good you know, bang for your buck, or you're getting like, um, a deal that you feel smart about, or you're in the know, or whatever it is. Um, and I think for FabFitFun, it is like the value sense. And, you know, value is not like an easy thing to build a community around, but like there are people who are like really passionate about like saving that extra dollar. Um, and even though they won't necessarily talk about it that way, I think, um, that community like does bond around that. I think there's others where— I guess the other two I was going to say is like one is, um, kind of around the, uh, the, the the actual use case. So I think the best recent example is probably Peloton, in which people just love being Peloton users and NPS is super high, churn is extremely low, and so on and so forth. But I think the third is actually interesting and there's a cultural one. I think for— and I'll speak directly with our counterparts, but companies like Glossier, which is oftentimes touted as the leading skincare/beauty brand in, in the venture ecosystem, even though they actually do oftentimes less run rates than like the bootstrapped kind of lesser-known, you know, lesser-known brands. I think, you know, they put out this feeling of like, hey, we are this cool millennial girl in a big city, and, you know, we put out this feeling that you're— it's like a cool 25-year-old, right? The customer set is actually like high schoolers. And I think I can name a bunch of other examples like this, like Away, for example. I think when they started is this cool millennial product, you know, got all these influencers, but the actual customer in the beginning was probably business travelers. So, um, so I think, you know, I think there's areas to build like an aspirational, like, you know, community where it's like, hey, I want to achieve that. And there's these leaders in our space, like for example with, um, Away, maybe it was like Karlie Kloss, or maybe with Glossier it was actually the CEO Emily, um, who built that like aura of like celebrity. But, um, but I think that's actually the hardest to maintain because, you know, Customers are flippant and they'll kind of like churn out.

Yeah, probably not the best customer set, right?

Um, yeah, I, I totally agree. Sean, did you ever see the analytics for SoapHub? So SoapHub was our friend's soap opera news website. Have you seen the analytics?

I've seen you guys posted something about it. You did a blog post. I've seen what you posted publicly because I met him after he sold it.

We had the founder of Bleacher Report look at— so we have this friend who has this blog. All they did was blog about soap operas. And we had the founder of Bleacher Report look at his Google Analytics and he goes, I've never seen engagement like this. And it was all middle America moms. I'm telling you, that market's good.

No, I know. I totally agree. The middle America mom is a great market. The Super saver, like the— what's the first? Not penny hoarders, but the one you said before that, the ones who—

I don't know if that's actually a thing.

Professional, like, contest enterers. Yeah, that's not the best, right? They're the ones who are trying to leech your programs and be like, oh cool, they have a referral bonus, let's create a giant referral chain and like milk this baby.

It's like, they work so hard and it's like, man, this is like— this is like $8, just buy it, it'll be easier.

And sometimes it's okay, like for example, for Italic, your value proposition is value, right? You're getting amazing good at like a fraction of the price that you would normally pay, so attracting the value shopper is the right move probably, whereas if your thing is all about status, like for example, my wife has this e-commerce business and one of the kind of core things that people do is collect. They, you know, like I've only ever seen businesses where you chase customers, you're trying to tell customers to buy from you. Her business, they do new style drops of like, you know, a new product, you know, every Friday, and people are lining up. So it's like an Apple, you know, like an iPhone launch. So basically you have to implement these rules that you can't buy more than X of every product because it like, it's selling out too quickly type of thing.

So I've never even seen somebody limit a cart. It's like, aren't you always trying to build the cart to be bigger? And it's like, no, no, no, we have it where you can max buy 2 items because, you know, we have to, it's like, you know, when hand sanitizer was flying off the shelves and grocery stores had to put a limit on it. That's what happens there because that's a collector's mentality. They want to get every one of the new stuff that comes out because it's rare. And they will wake up in the morning early to be at their computer trying to get it within 1 minute of the drop. All the revenue happens in a 120-second period, and then it's over for the day.

I dig it. I'm into it.

That's a good idea. It's almost like— I mean, it's real scarcity, but it's also like buy it and force it. I think the more often you reinforce the scarcity of a product to a very active audience, but do so in a classy way, the better. It's almost like Black Friday where it's like, hey, you can get this in this very short bounded period of time and then it's gone and you're going to have to wait another year. So I know it's a totally different comparison, but yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. What else you got?

I have so many. I don't know how fast you want me to go through. I have— okay, so I have venture tech businesses and I have more standard, you know, like— That's fine.

Well, well, okay, what did we just cover? Just do go A, B, A, B, A, B.

Subscription bread of the month, I think would be great for like someone who wants to just start something, you know, and you can, you know, start it small.

And why bread? Why did you pick bread versus—

Margins are— you can— I mean, if you position it as like a premium product or you position it as like a utility, hey, like we're skipping the grocery store, you're going to do this anyways, you want the best yeast, you want whatever it is, like here's a starter kit. I think the margins on that and the retention will be really strong if you can deliver on that. And it's also like, you know, it doesn't have to be expensive.

So, um, and also bread's hot right now, Sean, don't you know this?

Well, that's what I'm saying, like, give me the, give me the trends, uh, Mr. Trends.

Everyone knows banana bread in particular is going through the roof right now.

Everybody knows this. Everybody knows banana bread is through the roof.

Anyone who has—

fuck you, nobody knows. Nobody knows banana bread is through the roof.

Abreu, do you know this? Anyone who has an Instagram or a TikTok knows that home baking and bread, particularly banana bread—

you can't use a brave, he works for you.

Jeremy, am I right or wrong? Is, uh, is banana bread like surging right now?

Yeah, I also said pears are the fruit of the year, so yeah, I'm just jealous you're not talking about pears.

Okay, so someone actually did— I forgot, um, so I did see this in the wild somewhere and I thought they did a good job with it. But okay, so that was one idea.

Um, hold on, let me tell you one thing I like about that, by the way. I think that you want to make brag-worthy products, meaning Can the product, after the consumer has it, is it Instagram-worthy? Will they share this on Instagram or TikTok, the thing that they're doing? Because that's gonna drive a lot of your adoption. And this is such a good one where it's like, it's an interesting thing, making bread, something people don't usually do, but the skill cap is actually probably pretty low. You're actually gonna be able to do it and have a good output. Um, and then lastly, it's brag-worthy. It doesn't look like a brag. Like if you bought something expensive and you share it, well, that's only a certain type of person would do that. But I think a lot of people would happily share that they're doing a fun thing today in quarantine, which is like baking bread at home and shit happy with how it turned out. So I love the bragworthiness of that idea.

I think there's a lot of like subscription things that you can do that are not like you won't have fatigue. Like, you know, the downside I think of subscription food, for example, or subscription apparel is like it is, you know, it's limited to quarterly or in the case of food, like if you did, let's say you actually want to go out to eat, right? Like what are you going to do with your box? You feel like you have to cook it at some point. So anyways, I think subscriptions are super interesting when it comes to actually like product boxes. I think another idea that's a little bit more— this can go either way. I think I listened to one of your podcasts and I think you guys mentioned Sundays, which I love that business. I think it's like super smart.

You want to explain what it is?

Oh, so it's basically like, it's a suite of products that like kind of provide lawn care. How do you put it? It's kind of like products to help people who have lawns take care of their lawns and they To dumb it down, it's a Roundup alternative that has no chemicals and is D2Seed or whatever you want to do to de-seedify. Well, I mean, for people who've lived in cities, I don't even know if they would know what Roundup is. So I think that— I mean, that's— I think that's part of the whole suburban, like, kind of market.

And yeah, weed killer.

Yeah. Another— this is, I think, a smaller, you know, total addressable market, but I think the basket size could be larger is doing a similar thing for pool care. The number of pools out there are— it's huge. There's actually a lot of like software built for, you know, these pool services and so on and so forth. But when you actually do research into the products that they use, it's like, it's like, it's really kind of gnarly, old school looking, you know, chemical-based stuff. So that was one idea.

Do you guys— first of all, there's this company called Leslie Pool Supply. Did you guys grow up with pools?

No, I have one now. This is the first pool I've ever had.

So I used to go to this store called Leslie with my dad. I would go there called Leslie Pool Supplies. All they do, it's like a relatively small rinky-dink store and you go and you buy like a variety of bleaches. I mean, it was all pretty harsh stuff. They have a market cap. I just looked it up of $5 billion. It's just a chain of like small stores. You guys probably didn't experience this, but if you have blond hair, these chemicals were so strong that if I would swim too much, my hair— and if you're like a white blond hair person, your hair turns green. Have you ever seen that?

Yeah, his name is, uh, It's called MySutro. So mysutro.com, S-U-T-R-O dot com, mysutro.com. His name's Ravi. He actually was a Founders Dojo guy, Sean. So that's how I knew him. Gotcha. He's a good dude. He's been at this for years. It does. I don't know why this actually hasn't— isn't significantly larger.

Bigger.

Yeah, right.

Actually, I think a lot of like, this is so kind of— this is like, I think you guys had talked about like Constellation and software and like, you know, there's so— and What was the company like? Service Titan or something. There's so many like opportunities in these like niche neighborhood businesses that you think are like so, you know, most people would think are so small, but there's like literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of these businesses like across the US alone and providing like verticalized software. This is not, I still don't think it's a venture business, but like building straightforward verticalized software for those use cases such as pool maintenance, which I know exists like to a large degree. Because I did my own research on it. But I think you could do this for a number of those verticals. That was actually not on my list, but I can keep going if you want. I could kind of run through a couple if you want.

Yeah, keep going.

All right, I've got one. So I think Stripe Atlas, for those who don't know, is basically company formation as a service. And this is not new by any means, and plenty of people have done this from Clerky to I think there's a new one called Firstbase and whatnot. Generally costs like between, you know, maybe $300 to $1,000 depending on the state and service. But I think there are, uh, verticals for, um, uh, administration like that that is more niche and you can actually charge more for. So for example, trust fund administration I think could be interesting as a, as a service. Um, there's a lot of like—

I basically, I think Jeremy, describe Clerky because I was a user of Clerky And I think they've gone out of— I don't know if they've gone out of business, but it's kind of like on autopilot, it seems.

Yeah, I think so. I've used Clerky for two companies in the past, and it's—

it was amazing.

Yeah, I mean, it's basically a standardized set of documents that you can use for company formation as a Delaware C-Corp, which is what most venture businesses would form as. And you can do it for like, you know, it's so cheap. I think the danger with Clerky is every founder out there who's listening, who's new, the 83B process, you really have to be careful of. I'm not going to explain the whole thing, just make sure you do your research and actually file the 83B so that you are purchasing your shares. The reason why I bring it up is there's a time limit, but Clerky almost screwed us twice on that. So that was one downside with it versus an actual dedicated service. But Yeah, I think it's on autopilot and I'm sure they're—

So Clerky, it's like they had maybe 40 documents that were standardized, but it had a DocuSign component and I think it was $9 a document. And we had 36 investors. And so we sent this to them. So 36 times, let's say 10 bucks. So we only paid them $360, but it was one of those services. Sean and I, you actually just discussed this the other day where you start using it and you're like, Oh, it's only this much money, whatever. You just keep doing it and you keep doing it and you keep doing it and it slowly adds up.

Yeah. All right, one more. Um, I have so many. Okay, uh, one is homeschooling software. I think there's a lot of, um, you know, this is I think a significantly growing trend, um, in homeschooling, not just because of COVID I think COVID was an accelerant. Um, so providing software that is, um, and I think there's a venture company called Primer doing something kind of akin to this, but, um, providing things like attendance, report cards, grading, test generators, admin services where you basically can run a homeschool for you or even a marketplace of having dedicated homeschooling teachers. That was one.

So, so where are they at now? I mean, what's going on with that company now?

It's going— I think it's going fine. They, they have a bunch of teachers on the roster that each, you know, this guy specializes in space, this guy specializes in science and surgeries or whatever, different topics. And, uh, they do small group classes of like 6 to 8 people and, uh, uh, like after-school education basically. And COVID still has like so many— it's hard to know what's gonna happen to this business post-COVID, but I would say like this is like a variation of homeschooling. It's not pure homeschooling, it's either something you can add into your homeschooler's day for an hour, or it's a, hey, I send my kid to public school, they come home from school and like they want to watch TV and stuff anyways. Well, we could do this for 30 minutes instead, and I feel like at least my kid got like enriched a little bit, uh, and I'll happily pay the equivalent of like $10 a week for how to have this tutor basically tutoring my kid over Zoom, uh, but it's done in an educating, uh, entertaining way.

By the way, Sean, Are you just wearing a robe? Yes.

Okay.

I just noticed that. I just thought we should get that out of the way. Were you like—

It's audio only, baby. I don't know if anyone sees these clips. I just assume it's audio only. I'm in a robe.

All right. All right. I want to get 3 out first and then I'll kind of shut up for a bit. One is I'm personally— I think you guys might be into this, but I've been really into the idea of franchises for a long time. I think sometimes people in our ecosystem at least will look down on these types of businesses, but some of them are phenomenally profitable and they're extremely capital efficient. And it's a really lightweight way to build kind of a brand and a go-to-market strategy without actually having to kind of be a super rich person to start or raise a bunch of money. I think there's opportunities to modernize a lot of the kind of legacy franchises. So for example, Are you guys familiar with a company called Sonder?

Oh yeah, the hotel kind of company.

Yeah, so they basically like take over people's leases and they manage the properties. And originally there's a listing platform to, you know, they would take those properties and they would list it on like Craigslist, Airbnb, and so on and so forth and get, you know, they would manage it. And then I think more recently they're starting to like aggregate the demand on their side so that people actually go to sonder.com and then, you know, actually book directly., so they don't have to pay the fee. You know, I think they're like, I think the largest, like one of the largest, um, list, like unified listers on Airbnb at some point. But, um, I think there's an opportunity to do something similar with, um, with, uh, with actually fitness centers and gyms. Um, uh, you know, the concept exists for hotels, like, you know, you'll have like Marriotts or whatever come over and kind of manage the, um, property. But, um, I think gyms right now, like you have either, you have like a, I think a bifurcation in the market of like really low-end gyms, um, which you you might pay like a, depending on where you are, like $10, $20, $30, $40 a month for. Or you have like the really premium gyms of which they're like, you know, some in LA was like $200 or $225 per month for an Equinox, and it's an annual subscription. It's a huge upfront commitment. I think there's a mid-market opportunity to do something similar. And I mean, Sonder is familiar to, I think, the US audience. There's also like OYO Rooms, you know, internationally. Which has done this for hotels, but at a very, like, very, very low-end budget kind of model. I think there's an opportunity to do something in the mid-market for, for fitness centers and gyms. Right now, obviously, it's like the worst time to do this, but it's an idea that I think is interesting. Along the same lines, I think there's an opportunity to do something similar in convenience stores. This is actually an area that I've— it's like super unsexy, but like It's a huge— like, there's so much volume that goes into convenience stores, and it's, it's for an obvious reason, right? Like, there's companies like GoPuff or whatever, but I believe— I, I think like they'll get to maybe 10, 15, 20% market saturation penetration at most, kind of like what e-com is right now. Um, I think convenience stores will probably always exist, but right now like it's super, you know, in New York you have bodegas and like suburbs you have like 7-Elevens. But I think there's an opportunity to either do a roll-up, um, and the reason why I think there's an interesting use case there is like right now convenience stores are retailers and they have to buy wholesale from brands or distributors, and they don't have any negotiation leverage as an independent, like, as a one kind of man show or, you know, a small shop. But I think if you had a larger kind of supply base to purchase off of, that could be interesting. And you could do it either as a franchise model or as a roll-up of your own. And I also think the McDonald's— you can tell I'm all over here, but like, uh, they're, uh, you You know the McDonald's model, how like franchisees will actually buy, um, they'll buy the license to become a franchise, but then McDonald's will actually buy the real estate, and then the, uh, the sale, the proceeds from the actual franchise will actually go towards the real estate purchase. I think that actually could be interesting because convenience stores have like the best real estate possible in like a lot of these bigger cities, um, and sometimes suburbs because they're in the middle of like a town. I don't know, Sam, I don't know if you were going to say anything there.

I think, uh, no, my wheels are turning. I'm thinking, I'm scheming in my head.

Um, this is, this is a fun one. Like, for anyone who runs a, an American factory, there's a lot of these like smaller kind of, you know, uh, let's say 2,000 to 5,000 square foot factories in the US. I think there's actually opportunities to create like really, uh, well-loved, high-affinity branded factories. I know this sounds really weird, but like think Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. If you run a chocolate factory and you like did a daily show on like, hey, I'm grinding, like, you know, I just got my shipment of, you know, cacao, I'm like going through the roasting process, or you could do it for coffee. I think there's actually a lot of opportunity for building brands online. I think Emma Chamberlain like has— I mean, she's— this is a very far-fetched example, but like what she's— who? Oh, Emma Chamberlain's, um, like one of the biggest YouTube, um—

yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this woman. I, I just discovered her.

What does she do? I don't know her.

She's just like, she's just like a cool— yeah, she's just a YouTuber, but she's like pretty cool. I don't know, she's like, you know, like obviously cute and charming and entertaining.

What does she talk about? Or she just talks about her life?

It's like a vlog. It's almost like a very, um, nothing. Yeah, but the interesting— she like the, the— I think, you know, you guys talked about the, um, I think it's Cloud Kitchens, which I love, by the way. I think like those guys are, you know, uh, Reed, um, and, and Night Media. They're also investors for Italki as well. But, um, yeah, amazing people to have. But I think the, you know, most times when people do merch with influencers, it's like, it's crap. Like, you're not— you're gonna buy it, like, maybe if you're a super fan, but like, you know, it's a t-shirt. Like, what are you actually gonna do with it? Um, but I think when you do things that are like really on brand— so for example, what Emma did was she partnered with a, um, uh, a coffee manufacturer. She's really into coffee. She partnered with the coffee manufacturer and launched Chamberlain Coffees. And I think like they're probably doing multiple of what we're doing right now for Italki. So I think there's opportunities to do things.

So it's— wait, let's— we got to talk about this for a second. So, Sean, this Emma Chamberlain, Google her. She's like 19. She's got the— she kind of— she looks like this. I don't know what her stereotype is.

Like quirky, quirky, likable, cute.

Yeah, I don't know what her shtick is. I watched a video of her where she rented a hotel room by herself because she wanted a staycation, and I have no idea why I watched. It was a 20-minute series. She's just entertaining. She's good. Her tagline, Chamberlain Coffee, zero bullshit, just coffee. Chamberlain Coffee, zero bullshit, just coffee.

Like, it's, it's, it's like, it's like a legit brand now. It, when it started, it was kind of like, you know, a crappy Squarespace site, but now, like, it's a beautiful brand. I think it's like, I think that's like an influencer slash celebrity brand done right, and it's so rare, you know.

So do you think Does she own 100% of this, you think? Uh, because I'm looking— it usually— here's what— and I always— I like to go through the stuff with the listeners. What I like to do is whenever I go to these websites, I scroll all the way to the bottom and I find out who owns the copyright or trademark or what the copyright or trademark is. And then if you typically Google it in quotation marks, you can find out who owns it. Do you think? But I don't see that on her site.

I think I think, uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to speak like incorrectly, but how big do you think—

how much revenue do you think this, this woman makes off this, the top line sales on Chamberlain Coffee? You think they do more than $40 million in sales?

And in exchange, they give you what?

Distribution, which is the most expensive part of the game anyways. So, and I think, you know, I think that you talked about this previously as well, but I think like influencers are late, most are lazy. Like they don't have an aspiration to go beyond kind of like what they're currently doing. They're happy to do a promo, happy to do whatever. But if you made it really easy and it was just like, hey, like we have a designer, we have a, you know, whatever. It's kind of like we'll build a business in a box for you, but it's actually like catered to you in a way. Like, okay, a good example is I was looking at a chocolate factory right above— it was in Marin County and like really high quality.

Why? Why were you doing that?

For manufacturers from years and years ago for not— it was originally chocolates and then we moved into gummies. This is like 2016, 2017, but they went for sale and I was like, okay, this is interesting. Might as well actually look. There's this guy who's like a sexy Willy Wonka TikTok character. I forgot his name, but just imagine like, hey, put— literally put that guy in the factory, make him do a video once a day. He's going to be huge. Like, he's already huge. And you could do like a golden ticket, you know, you know, 1 out of every 1,000, you get like $1,000 or something like that. There's all these like, I think it has to be catered for the influencer, but I think there's branded factory opportunities where you have, you know, rev share. And, you know, I know there's agents who do this for like skincare and beauty, but like, I think beyond the standard merch and skincare, there's a lot of opportunity that's like a lot more interesting than, you know, selling a t-shirt.

Did we talk about the Buc-ee's thing, Sam?

What is that?

Maybe. Okay. So, all right. So this is a This is a crazy story. So I got a DM, by the way. This is the best part about doing it, doing this podcast, is I just get DMs that are interesting, interesting characters.

Have your DMs open?

Yes, my DMs are open.

I had to turn them off for a little while.

For what?

I don't know. I just didn't want to read them all, all of them. While you look for that, can we just say this Chamberlain Coffee thing, I'm buying it, or I'm buying this stuff. This site's beautiful.

It's great.

It's, it totally convinced me to buy.

It's end-to-end like a really well-done brand. And you rarely see, even for venture-backed companies that try, like it's very rare that you see that happen.

So no, they crushed it.

Sam loves cute girls and curly fonts, so he was in at first sight. All right, so, so this guy, uh, so I met this guy Chris, and Chris says, hey man, I got kind of a crazy story. And I think The Hustle might have actually done a feature on this. I'm not 100% sure, but he tells me this story. He goes, so there's this chain of, uh, kind of like gas stations in Texas called Buc-ee's. I lived in Texas, I didn't even know about this. Do you guys ever heard of this chain? Most people, if you're not in Texas, you probably haven't heard of this.

Buc-ee's.

Buc-ee's. It's B-U-C-E. Oh, the gas station. Exactly.

They're gassing.

Kirk, who reached out to you?

Chris. His Twitter handle is Serial Trep, like serial entrepreneur. And I saw, I was like, you have like 50,000 followers. How do you, how do you have so many followers? He's like, oh, like I was doing some Bitcoin stuff like, you know, a few years ago. It got really popular, you know, like, you know, John McAfee was invited me to his house for some shit, like kind of got blown up from that. But like, yeah, I changed my domain name now. I changed my handle now so that, you know, it's more generic, not about crypto.

Okay, listen, I'm gonna talk about something that a friend has been telling me that he wants to do, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna mention it. Because I have to. I'm looking at sendeats.com. So if you go to texassnacks.com, that's this guy's website. You scroll to the very bottom. It looks like it's owned by Sendeats. Sendeats.com. And basically it's a service that— how do they describe themselves? They just do it with that Buc-ee's things for everyone.

This is the same guy. This is their— this is his company. So basically they're a 3PL, which basically just means they're like the warehouse and fulfillment. So So you store your products there, they pack it and ship it out to your customers for you.

And in their about page, they say in 2020 they expanded to cold chain. Do you know what cold chain storage is?

It's basically where you're temperature controlled, you know, temperature handled, right?

Yes. And a lot of insiders of this space, this legit food logistics, I don't know what you would call it, but I've been talking to some friends in that space and many people have said to me cold chain expansion, cold chain Storage is the number one category for growth.

Oh, it's crazy. You can't— you literally can't find a vendor for it right now. It's like I'm telling my parents— my parents have a warehouse in Chicago and they have like a manufacturing business. That's our family business. But like, I'm trying to get them to like convert their warehouse to a cold chain, like, you know, cold storage.

So what can you— I don't really know too much about what that means. In detail. Can you explain to me, Jeremy, why is it the need exploding?

Is it a COVID thing or just in general?

So start this company, quit selling PotNot or Not Pot.

Your parents, what are your, what is your parents' warehouse for?

They, they do, they've been doing like very heavy duty industrials manufacturing for a long time. So they've produced parts for like Tesla um, uh, like General Motors, like, etc., etc. So it's like mining, auto.

So you were buying Tesla stock early? You're like, oh shit, look at this purchase order, baby, we got it, we gotta buy in.

I, I was not smart enough to do that. No, uh, well, at least you weren't dumb enough to sell it. You know, if you were actually a vendor for Tesla, I think the irony, um, I, I, this is not from my parents, but I think this is just in general, like, I've heard is, um they, they come to you saying like, you know, they're, they're big, you know, they're just like, hey, we're this huge, huge company. But in reality, like, the orders aren't actually that big relative to— I mean, this is a common story, right? Like, Ford ships a zillion times more, you know, cars than Tesla does.

But like, the market— I have a quick question, Jeremy. You are somewhat steeped in this VC world a little bit. I mean, you got your foot in it. Your family, are they Would they own warehouses?

They, um, they have a manufacturing company. Um, so they produce—

were they born and raised here in Chicago?

Classic Asian immigrant story.

Yeah, and I'm stereotyping you, and I was right. So there, there are these, uh, immigrants who came here from— and, and they're the American dream, right? They started probably a small business, maybe they had like some type of store, and they're like, oh, we actually should start making the thing. And they like have slowly built it up over like 2 decades, right?

In this case, 4.

Yep. Great. So the American dream and pretty traditional, right, of like doing it slowly, probably. Maybe they took a little bit of debt, but they certainly didn't have investors, right?

Yep, yep, yep. Just slow and steady.

Yep. Slow and steady. Is it lucrative? Has it done well for them?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think I actually don't even know the numbers and they won't tell me, so I actually don't know. Another classic. Super high income, like, you know, super rich. I think we're like very healthy between middle to high income.

So So my question is this: what— how has your experience of like raising money and trying to like— I mean, I'm sure maybe they saw that and they were like, this is outlandish. Why are you doing this? This is stupid. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I mean, that's at least how my family was. But how has your experience and your friends' experience differed from them? And which do you think you like better?

Well, that's a huge question, actually. I mean, you could ask that to like everyone in Silicon Valley and I think you'd get like a thousand different answers. You know, I think when I was growing up, I'm sure you guys like probably felt similarly, like I think didn't feel perfectly, you know, like the classic Chicago track. And Chicago is like a very specific market.

I'm from St. Louis, by the way.

Oh nice, okay, so you get it. It's like you grow up, you become an accountant, you go to U of I, you go become an accountant at a big firm or work in insurance or a bar or something, you get married and like Your life is not work, it's your life, right? And your sole purpose is like fulfill your family's needs and continue so on and so forth. And I think like when you have an immigrant— I think another thing I will say is growing up Asian in the Midwest is very different than growing up Asian in the West Coast and also the East Coast. Like in the Midwest, like you're talking about like Korean churches, super like conservative, education is everything. Whereas if you grew up in the West Coast, like you have Asians who like go homeless and then you have Asians become billionaires. Like, neither of those really happened in the Midwest. So I think for me, I was like, hey, I want to get out of here, move to somewhere else. And I think in the beginning, like, it was 100% like just hustle. I was like, okay, go big or go home. Like, that's the whole reason why I dropped out and did the whole, you know, Thiel Fellowship thing and like so on and so forth, all of which I'm really, you know, grateful for. But I think, you know, as I get older, I think— and that's the irony of like being 25. I guess like I've been on this path for 6, 7 years now, but and I feel like ancient by now, but relative to a lot of the newcomers. But I think, you know, now that you've been in the game for a bit, it's like, okay, the flip side is now like, I think when we started in 2014-ish, you know, there were so many narratives that I think are no longer true today. So, you know, remote, there was no way you could do. If you wanted to raise money, like, you had to basically kill yourself to do so. This is like a 24/7 hustle. This is the era of, I think, the Ubers and so on. Whereas nowadays, I think, founder— I don't know if it's because more capital has flown into the ecosystem so that founders have more leverage, but I don't know. I think that the opposite, the more conservative compounding side of the business is, I think, equally valued now, not by investors by any means, but I think as a founder, it's an actual legitimate option. If you were in San Francisco in like 2013, there's no way you were going to do that, right? It's like you're going to look down at every company unless it was raising money. You were kind of always comparing, you know, who raised more, whatever. Um, but nowadays, like, a lot of those companies are way bigger than ours.

So I don't know, it's, it's, uh, which, which are you referring to that's bigger than you? Like a Glossier?

Or I don't know who you consider, uh, actually, I, I, I love like the Glossier brand. I think they're like, they did a great job, but I will say like, hey, If you were Glossier and you were the founder there, you gave up like more than probably half your company and you had co-founders or whatever.

No, I bet you she owns less than 10%. Yeah, I bet she owns 10%. I mean, that's a lot though. It's a, it's a, it's a billion-dollar business maybe.

I mean, who— that's, that's true, maybe. But then I think on the flip side, there's like companies like Milk Makeup, Deciem, you know, I could name so many here that probably have achieved similar run rates, but they kept the entire thing, you know, in-house. And when it comes to an exit You keep the whole thing and by the way, you don't have to kill yourself day in, day out to hire engineers, whatever it is. And they've achieved— and Gymshark is probably the more recent example of this, right? So, I don't know. And Gymshark, the comp you could use is like Outdoor Voices, right? Which is both are great brands but like—

Yeah, the woman who started Outdoor Voices was fired.

Exactly.

People have done— I have a couple friends who've, who come from manufacturing families, and they basically put out a consumer brand on top and they're doing like, you know, one of my friends started Outer, which is like the furniture company, and now they're doing like tens of millions.

So they own their factory?

It was a, I think it was a family business for the manufacturing. Same with Buffy, like the comforter. They bootstrapped for a while before, you know, taking on capital, and that was a family business. There's so many examples like that, but these are just the 3 ideas that I wanted to share, and then I'll officially be done. Cool. Let's do it. One is, I think these are like the more controversial ideas, but I think like, you know, nowadays you as a founder, you can actually have the right to do whatever you want. I think Alcoholics Anonymous online is actually really—

We talked about that.

Oh, have you? Okay.

A little bit. I know. I mean, go for it. But we talked— there's— I think we talked about this a while ago. No, this is super interesting. And there's a company called The Tempest that has— that was launching around when we started talking about this. And so they're actually further along now. I wonder— we should do a checkup on them.

Just to finish the idea, you were saying AA online, basically digital mobile app or something.

It doesn't even have to be, um, specifically like AA. I think there's like a million like specific, you know, use cases. But I think the, um, the, uh, the bigger idea was just like, hey, can you build a specialized community for support groups? Um, and it doesn't have to be like an all-encompassing generalized like universal here is a support group platform like Reddit, but instead I think you can create like customized, um productized versions of each. So in AA's case, you have the steps and there's a number of other ones for mental health or whatever it is. So that was one. The second one is just following up on something you guys have talked about a bunch, which is— and this could go either in venture or lifestyle. I think you guys have talked about Andrew Wilkinson, what he's done with the Capital Daily, I think is awesome. I think everyone respects that. I think the way he goes about building businesses is very specific and well-known nowadays to him. But I do think there's actually a venture approach as well in which you can create more of a democratized system of like, hey, we're going to find local editors in mid-market cities. For example, here, like, Provo is a pretty big city around here and there's like Boise, so on and so forth. And I think a lot of those Basically, the idea is like, I think you can create a modern-day Patch, which was acquired, you know, however many years ago.

Yeah. Well, Patch is still getting after it.

Yeah. No, I think the idea, like Patch is, I think the reason Patch kind of sucks as a user is like the content is like not curated whatsoever. There's like—

It's just a little old looking.

Yeah, it's old. It's like there's so many things going on. But if you just had like a paid, you know, you monetize through subscription businesses as opposed to advertising. I agree. And like a dollar a week or whatever it was, um, I think there's enough people in those like mid-market cities that you can actually build a sizable, like, you know, multi-million dollar run rate per city, per, you know, country business. And your job as a venture company would be to build the tools to empower and source those editors, kind of like The Athletic actually, as a good example.

Yeah, and if people are curious, Patch was started by AOL. I think it was like Tim Armstrong Armstrong. It was like, it was Tim Armstrong. He was a, he was an AOL— Tim Armstrong's help start, uh, was an early Google guy. And then for a minute he was a CEO of AOL. Patch was his baby. I don't know if he started it or if he bought it. I don't know. I forget, but it was like a localized news website, I guess. And it's never gone out of business. And I think now they're doing tens of millions of revenue, but it was like touted as like the next big thing. That didn't exactly become the next big thing.

I don't know, how do you spell that?

Oh, P-I-N-D-U-O-D-U-O. It is actually, I think, the craziest venture story.

Oh yes, Sean has brought this up many times.

It's insane. But the mechanic that people, I think, oftentimes fixate on when it comes to Pinduoduo is like the group buying. I don't actually think that's the reason why it succeeded. They had group buying like prior to this. Like there was two companies that eventually like merged into one. It's a really crazy founding story, but like they focused on produce. And I think the concept of actually like getting one person in a community to buy bulk produce and then distribute it to like the rest of the moms or whoever it is, that's the primary kind of like cooker, I guess, the chef in the household, is I think actually what led to PDD like doing really well in the beginning. So I think if you can figure out—

So how do the logistics of PDD work? So definitely it's, you buy in bulk and save, So it's like a community can kind of buy vegetables, fresh produce. So is it actually one person receives it? That's like, you know, one of the customers holds it and then distributes it out themselves, or does PDD deliver to each house?

It's changed over the years. You know, nowadays I think they've built the mechanics so that it's, the payments will actually happen like separately. So they'll orchestrate the payments and then they'll also ship separately. So it's just all about like lowering CAC at that point. It's just like, hey, can I get you to refer someone else like now? Then, you know, as opposed to waiting later. But there's companies like, earlier on, and what they did, like in China, there's companies called like NiceTwin, MissFresh, etc., where it is like one person who buys for a local community, and you get like a huge kind of bundle of product, and you distribute it locally. So it's almost like the basket size is enormous, and their frequency of use is very high. So group buying. And then, okay, this, I know I said last time, but this is actually my last one. Um, uh, okay. This is probably the craziest one. Um, but it's like, if there's any like hard tech people out there that I think are like into this, um, I actually think this is, um, a potentially like really big opportunity. Um, this, this is the most out there. So I was thinking you could build a, Like, we, we know right now, like, we have crop failures, um, a lot. And, um, and, and there's also a shortage of, uh, um, uh, honeybees. Like, honeybees are actually, like, going down in population.

You're talking to a beekeeper in San Diego. He's an actual beekeeper.

Oh, why?

Okay, well, anyways, I mean, I don't know anything. I just bought it off Amazon. Like, it's not like I— like, I can't tell you about bee stats.

All I know is I had some bees The, uh, the idea was basically like, hey, can you build either autonomous crop pollinators, um, which I think is actually a, an increasing challenge right now for—

well, wouldn't that just be a drone?

It's like a drone bee.

Well, you, I mean, yeah, you could, you could take it either way, but, um, uh, I think like right now the, the issue, uh, like specifically with companies like Monsanto and whatnot is like you have, um, uh, kind of like like, how do you even put it? Like you have spread between like Monsanto-based crops as well as like non-Monsanto-based crops. And then like that genetic variation can actually cross, like there's no physical barrier to prevent like a crop crossing over. And they're all, there are the actual like service right now for pollinating crops is a beekeeper, like literally going to a farm and like releasing bees and saying like, okay, and I'm going to charge you for the day. Um, and, uh, I think this is going to be continuing, like, you know, trend. I know this is really out there, but I actually think there's a big opportunity for it.

It's actually not that out there.

I don't understand the idea. So, so what would be the idea here? So you would do—

hold on, look, listen, Sean, what you have to do is right now, if you're a beekeeper, and these are people who I bought my bees from, they actually— you pay money and sometimes they'll drive literally cross-country And a farmer will pay a fee and a beekeeper will bring literally hundreds of hives. I've, I own 2 hives. So someone would bring like hundreds and they would place them in your field for maybe 4 weeks. And then at the end of the bees pollinating, because you need bees in order to grow the plant. So the bee goes from plant to plant to plant and in doing so drops seeds and stuff like that. Um, or I think, uh, drop seeds probably, but okay. I don't know if it's dropped seeds, but something happens.

Rubs the pollen on each other.

Yeah. Yeah. Like it, it helps create more plants is basically what it does. And a farmer will pay, um, uh, uh, for one month of that. And then the beekeeper goes back, picks up their bees, brings them home, grows more, gets more, and then does it again.

Every— Isn't that crazy? Like you, to pollinate commercial, like large-scale crops, you need truckloads of them. Yeah. Like, like millions of acres. Like this is actually how it's done. I mean, it's mind-blowing to me. And the bee population is like dying, like it's dropping year over year.

So what would be the solution? So you're saying a non-bee solution for the pollination?

Um, well, I think there you could do two ways. Like you could do, um, you could do it like via like large-scale drone. And, um, uh, and I think like I actually— I mean, you could do it that way, um, in which like you basically blanket a certain like set area. Um, the alternative, um, is you actually go like actually try to create like micro I don't know if you'd talk about it from the standpoint of a robot bee, but I think there's ways to go about pollinating a crop.

Engineer a bee, basically.

You could even have a standardized robot drive between, I guess, the rows of a crop and spray. I don't know. I just think there's an opportunity there. I invested in this company called Paika a couple of years ago that's doing autonomous crop dusting in in New Zealand. They never got the license, I don't think, in the US yet. But I think there's a lot more opportunity in like the commercial farm. Like there's all these like really, I know, I think Sam, you're really into trucking, but I think there's all these like opportunities in like farming that is just like as large. And it's a really, I mean, if you think about it, it's like critical to everyone, right? Whether it's vegan or—

My friend, this is what I've been saying since the beginning of this podcast. Like sometimes people dismiss trucking and particularly farming. My parents are in that industry, and I'm like, if the truckers go away, you're not getting anything. And yeah, if the farmers can't farm, you're not going to eat anything.

No one's hating on truckers and farms. Everyone loves our truckers. We love our farms. Uh, that's not what anybody's saying. The only thing anyone's ever said is like, hey, if these trucks can drive themselves, you probably won't have We don't want to have trucking be the number one job in America. You know, so maybe those truckers will have to shift into doing something else if the trucks drive themselves, because maybe we don't want humans driving 18 hours a day as like their, you know, the way they live their life.

My point is that I just think driverless trucks is quite far.

The only thing I was just going to make a point here, which is like, hey, those industries are like, I think trucking now is recognized by like the venture community as like, hey, this is actually a really big opportunity. But I think the commercial farming industry is like, It's like as large, I think, as this trucking. And they're like really big opportunities that if you have any interest in business applications, wouldn't you rather build like— I mean, this is my whole thing. I started, I dropped out to start a company in HR SaaS and like no kid drops out to go and work on like HR tech, right? Like that's not what you dream of. But if your goal is to make money and that's like what you want to do through software or technology, like it's a really great place to spend time.

How are you? When we should wrap up in a second, but how are you spending your time right now? Because you have this business, Italic, which I imagine is— that's like your job, you know, that's your 9 to 5 or more than that. But you also have this Not Pot thing. It sounds like you are— you do all types of scheming. How do you—

Well, for what it's worth, a lot of these ideas are things that like I've just jotted down over the years. So it's not like in preparation for this podcast, I was like, okay, gotta come up with like 100 ideas. They're just things that I think I'd really love to see in the world or someone to take on and whether that's in the facet of being an investor or advising or whatever it is, I really don't have much time. So I just wanted to get these out there and I feel like this is the perfect place to do it. In terms of day-to-day, it's like, yeah, it's like, you know how the startup founder grind is, it's like 9 to late at night, 99% of it is Italic. Italic is like a really hard business to start. It is not something that I recommend to anyone. Please don't try to copy. It's not worth it. Believe me. I mean, hopefully it'll be worth it for Sean and every one of our investors and so on, but the amount of work that goes—

This is why I love pimping out Bitcoin, because the more people that copy me, the higher the price goes. That is the beauty of Bitcoin. And as long as we all keep doing that, we all win.

And last question, did you used to own Fountain.com?

We still do. Yeah, it was, I think it was like $80K or something. Interesting. Italic was more, so.

How much was italic.com?

I think Italic was like $115K.

Did you use a broker or what'd you do?

Yeah, yeah, we used a broker.

I mean, $100K, how much have you raised?

I mean, $100K for italic.com, If you're trying to build a big brand, I mean, yeah, please.

He paid in cash. He just brought the briefcase for that one. I mean, $115K.

I tried equity. I really did. I tried to get— Thank you. The guy's had it since the '90s. Like, you know, I tried every trick in the book before I went to a broker and just said like, let's get it. So, right. Yeah. I use my sister's college email, like, you know, all that stuff. Oh, wow.

That's smart. Well, I gotta run. Thank you, Jeremy. This is awesome.

Thanks for coming on, dude. Good seeing you as always.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun.

All right. See ya. We'll share this. Talk soon.