#159 - Update on Michael Jordan's House, a Nine Figure Sex Toy Company & the Man with a Million Acres
I don't think I would want to do something that high profile because if you screw up, it would be a big deal.
Oh, look at you. You're afraid to fail now. Oh, you make it big, you sell your company, and now, now you're like, I gotta watch my step. What's going on?
I'm not afraid to—
Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do? Yeah, I feel like I could rule the world.
Sean's new studio. Are you in a garage? Is that what that is?
I am in my garage. We, uh, We upgraded, we improvised. So we did this crazy thing where we had talked about on the podcast, we were like, shit, we need to like upgrade our setup. I think mostly it was you just telling me to get a haircut, which is fair, and wear a shirt, wear a shirt. And I took that as I need a whole new studio. So, so basically these guys who are from Chicago, they're like 23-year-old guys who love the podcast. They were like, they heard that. And this is like their forte. They do like camera, audio. They have their own podcast. They have their own YouTube channels. They're basically, what I realized was I went and watched their YouTube channel and his YouTube channel has like, this guy Henry, his YouTube channel has like, I don't know, 570 subscribers. So it's not like some big YouTube channel, but if you watch it, it's the same level of quality of like video, audio, and editing as like Casey Neistat's channel.. And I showed this to our friend Sully and I go, I go check these guys out. Like, look at, look at their channel. These are the guys coming this weekend to make my studio. And he goes, he goes, I remember when I was kind of like 21, 22, we were coming up and what the kind of 30 and 40-year-olds used to say was, oh man, you guys have this huge advantage because you're like, you're, you're like digital natives is what they were calling us. Like we grew up with a computer and the internet. I think we got the internet and computers when we were like in 6th grade. I don't know about you. It was probably around the same, 5th, 6th grade, something like that. And so, you know, for our parents, they were getting a computer when they were 35 or 40. So it's just like, you know, you didn't have that. You didn't have it to grow up on. And so he goes, these guys, this is the next wave. They're video native. Basically, they grew up with a camera in their hand and they just like constantly shoot videos. They know how to edit it. They're not afraid to be on camera. And like, it's such a superpower. And I think it was so true what he was saying.
You said one line that I think is the real superpower, which is being on camera. So for you and I, we're kind of like media people, so we're maybe a little bit more used to it than the average Joe. But even I am still very uncomfortable just talking to a camera and like looking at it. Young people are not. When I was at the airport, I saw 12-year-old kids with like the phone on the ground with a PopSocket.
Right.
And they were like filming and I could see that they were doing TikTok dances and it was like, that's like unheard of for me because I'm like, oh my God, you're going to do that at the airport with people watching?
Right, right. Yeah. The upside is they all look cool. They know how to dance and they know how to edit videos. The downside is like, you know, they're like riddled with anxiety and stuff like that. So, you know, it's not all— it's not all good, but I—
but— and they're not having sex, which is a topic we're going to talk about.
We're going to talk about that. But the other thing I was going to say is, let me ask you this. When you get a— you're on Snapchat, right? You have Snapchat?
I had— no, I have an account.
All right. So, all right. Obrey, you got to chime in here. Obrey, how old are you? 27. All right. So you're more like us than like the people I'm talking about that are kind of like, I'm not going to say Gen Z. Yeah.
John, I think those couple— he is a lot hipper. He's a lot hipper than we are. All right. He's a little bit more into it.
Okay. So, so basically, uh, Aubrey, when you have Snapchat, right? So someone sends you a snap, right? They send you a picture of something they're doing, something they're looking at, and you need to reply. Tell me, do you just type the reply like in the text version or do you send back a photo?
That's so weird.
Yeah. See, that's crazy to me. Uh, that is wild to me. I'm like, you say something, I comment like it's fucking, like it's Facebook, right? I just write like, Oh, looks fun. Cool. That's great. You know, like, I'm like a 90-year-old.
You're talking about young people. Another interesting thing to do is when you ask a young person— or did you show me this? When you ask a younger person, what do you do when someone calls? If they put their hand— for the people listening, I have my hand like I'm waving high, like high five. If they put their hand like a high five to the ear versus they put their pinky and thumb out like this.
Well, or if you say, hey, do like a gesture to take a picture.. So if I said to you, hey Sam, take a picture. Yeah, you're gonna do this.
That's an old, old camera.
Yeah. This is not a camera. Right. So, so, so what they do is they, they hold up their, their hand like this with their thumb, like you're holding an iPhone. Right. We're like out here with a, a Polaroid trying to, trying to demonstrate what a picture is anyway. So, I don't even know why I'm talking about that, but basically these guys are, you know, I, I would say younger people are video native and I think that's gonna be a, huge, huge win for them because people like us are like self-conscious and like just don't know how to use the tools, right?
I wanna bring up a topic that's both related to this and something else. So at Sean's old office at Monkey Inferno, the guy who owns it, Michael Birch, awesome. It looked like it was out of a magazine, but he had one or two things that really stuck out. And one of 'em was this Macintosh computer. It was a Mac, Mac, Mac 2, is that what it was called?
Apple II. So I'm gonna look that up. So the reason I'm bringing this up is I am building my studio to look good like yours, um, and I was looking, thinking of like designs and interesting stuff to put in the back. And I also, this whole NFT has got me, uh, interested in art and like, you know, just beautiful. Yeah, just like valuable, or not valuable, beautiful, interesting, cool stuff. I've always liked stuff, uh, just like junk, right? Uh, that's what I used to like, uh, but now I'm gonna try to get some nicer shit anyway. I was looking around. How much do you think, uh, so is an Apple II— is that Apple II the same as a Mac, as a Macintosh II?
Uh, I don't know.
I don't know, a couple thousand. I'd say maybe somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000 would be my guess. $2,000 and $5,000.
You can get one that's in pretty good condition for like $500. You can get one, you can get a Macintosh II, which I don't know the difference between the Apple II and the Macintosh II. You can get a Macintosh II that is still in the box for like a grand. And do you remember the commercials when we were younger, we were in our teens, we were probably in 8th grade or 9th grade, where it was like a colored Mac? So it was like a blue, it was called the iMac, I think, right? Yep. You can get those for like $300. Now strictly speaking, like, from like a collectible, like, just it's interesting, it's, um, it's cool to look at. That's incredibly cheap for a machine.
I tell you what, every single person who came to our office was like, oh, this is awesome. Now granted, it's tech nerds coming to the office, but they were like wowed by this thing. And there was like expensive art all up on the walls, nobody cared about any of that. People saw this old thing and then we would boot it up and they would turn on and they were like amazed by it. So it definitely Every single person noted it, commented on it.
I think these types of like old computers, these vintage computers, I think these are going to get really popular. And the reason I think that is I was looking up how much, uh, so for a gift, I thought about buying people an iPod that wasn't connected to the internet. Did I tell you this? No. Um, so I was gonna buy people, uh, like our investors, I was gonna buy them like a small thank you. I was like, maybe if I spent $200 ahead, let's see if I can go and buy a bunch of— if I can buy like 20 iPods that aren't connected to the internet. And my plan was ruined because I'm like, oh wait, you have to have iTunes. iTunes. And that doesn't even exist. So like, this is pretty much meaningless. But these old iPods—
by the way, iTunes exists. I don't know.
Well, but I mean, like, you—
who—
no one buys it. Can you even buy MP3s anymore from it?
I don't think so. Yeah, you have to like have your own music.
Yeah, like that. No one does that anymore. You— we all stream. And like, these things didn't even have internet. I wanted it so you could like download it, and then it would only work if you were attached to Wi-Fi. But anyway, uh, old iPods, like old, old ones, first generation ones, are expensive, like $500-$600. And so anyway, I think that both would be cool to have this stuff on your—
Yeah. Okay. So look, here's a vintage working in good condition Macintosh II for $250. I'm looking at it on eBay right now. Here's a Macintosh in the box for $400. It's pretty interesting, right? I think this might become pretty popular, these old computers. And I think that it's kind of a cool idea.
Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, those are good. And I, I actually will go after this on eBay and try to scoop up at least, at least 2 of those just to hold and see what happens.
Um, all right, you want to get into, uh, you have 2 updates and then we have an idea, 2 ideas.
Yeah. Okay, so one update is on the Michael Jordan thing. So last episode we talked about Michael Jordan's house has been on sale for 10 years. It was a, it's a 56,000 square foot house and and it was originally listed for $30 million. Now it's been price cut, price cut, price cut all the way down to $13 million, and it's still not selling. And this is after The Last Dance. It's after this giant boom in, like, trading card collectibles. Like, the Michael Jordan rookie card is going for almost $2 million, and his 56,000-square-foot house can't sell for $13 million? Like, something seems off. Like, a little tiny 3-inch piece of cardboard can sell, but not this. So, uh, and he's paying property taxes. I think some— somebody said he's paid about a million dollars in property tax just while it sat on the market. And so we threw this out there last time. We said, hey, look, why don't we either collect— just me and you— or we crowdfund, uh, why don't we buy MJ's house? And like, what could we do with it? And we got a bunch of good feedback. So I would say like there's a bunch of smart people who immediately pointed out that one of our ideas, which was to turn it into some kind of museum, the Museum of Mike, you know, the basketball museum, would it work? Because, you know, the HOA, the neighbors would never permit you to let like tens of thousands of people come into their neighborhood and go to this museum every year, right?
So that was— I thought about, I mean, I was thinking about, I just figured there's got to be a way around something.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. When you start an idea, you don't think about all the different like small reasons why it might immediately fail. You think, you know, what if this works? And then you try to find a way to make it work. But the more interesting one, in my opinion, was always the simpler one, which was you don't have to turn it into a museum, you don't have to get permitting, you don't have to have guests coming in and operations folks, you just treat it differently. You don't treat it like a house, you treat it like it's a monument, it's a piece of art. And there are paintings that sell for $800, you know, $85 million, and so if a painting could sell for $85 million, I think Michael Jordan's house, this relic of the greatest basketball player of all time, is going to be worth something. And so the idea would be you crowdfund it, you get, I don't know, 5,000 people to each pitch in $2,000, you buy the thing out for $10 million, and, uh, you hold it as a piece of art. And then, you know, there was a couple of good suggestions I thought came in through Twitter. So some of the good suggestions were you could list this on Rally Road, where people go to buy like, you know, vintage cars or rare first edition Lord of the Rings book sets for $35,000 that, you know, 500 people each buy it, a fractional share of it. So that was one idea people liked. And the Rally Road guys said, hey, we're interested, let's talk. So talking to them—
They hollered at you?
They did. They replied to the tweet. And then Rob, I think he's the CEO, co-founder, he emailed me yesterday. And so we're gonna chat and see—
Dude, why does everyone cool reach out to you?
Bro, they know, they know.
My DMs are open, yes. I've also talked to him before through DMs because I was just like, Rally is fucking awesome. So I had reached out to him actually, saying, hey, Rally is awesome, can I invest in this thing? So he knew I was a fanboy already. But anyway, so that was one interesting thing. Some people in the crypto world were like, dude, let's turn this into an NFT, bro. And so I talked to the founder of Nifty Gateway, which is just exploding, this marketplace is just exploding for NFTs right now. So I asked him, "Hey, would you like to dabble?" And then the last thing was that some people were like, "Hey—" And what did they say? He was like, "Hey, this is cool." But he was like, "You know, we're just crushing so hard on the digital stuff. I don't know if we wanna get into this physical thing." Because there were some cool ideas from Twitter. Some people were like, You know, let's say you came in and you bought a $50,000 chunk. So you, instead of the $2,000 entry, you go for $50K. That should get you, like, if you present your certificate of ownership here, if you show your app and you show that you own a piece of this thing, you should be able to have like a 3-night stay once a year with you and all your friends.
We're gonna timeshare MJ's house.
Exactly. So you're not fully doing an Airbnb, you're treating it like it's art. But if you own a big enough share, if you're, you know, a super minority owner of this thing, then you can actually stay one weekend a year. And I thought that was pretty dope. So anyways, there's some cool ideas, but then at the same time, I ain't got time to do this and neither do you. So, um, what's gonna happen from here?
You're asking me? I don't know. I feel like you're kind of the leader on this one. Uh, nothing. If I had a bet, nothing. I— here, and here's why. When I did my deal, every smart person I talked to, what did you know what they said? I bet you can guess what they said. No, no. What did they say? Do nothing for 6 months.
Right. So don't invest it on your hands.
Yeah. Yeah. Don't invest. And so many times I've been, I've wanted to change and do something and everyone has said the same thing and I'm going to try my hardest to stick to it. So that's one of the reasons why, although that's probably a bullshit excuse. The reality is it's kind of an, I don't think I would want to do something that high profile because if you screw up, it would be a big deal.
Oh, look at you. You're afraid to fail now. Oh, you make it big, you sell your company and now, now you're like, I gotta watch my step? What's going on? I'm not afraid to— Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do?
Dude, my first time buying like a real estate asset and doing something like this would be like, I mean, that would be national. I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean—
Okay, I'm not saying you buy it. I'm saying clearly the way to go here is to crowdfund this thing because it's just more fun that way and you don't have to put out $10 million of risk capital.
How many emails did you get? So somebody—
oh yeah, that was the other thing. So somebody created a website, uh, Jonathan created a website. I think it's like buyjordanshouse.com or something like that. And I think he said, you know, pretty early on after the tweet, he said he had 200 people dropping their email. And I think about the same on Twitter said, I'm in, including a bunch of higher profile people. There's a bunch of people who are a bunch of really wealthy people, founders of companies, uh, owners of, owners of businesses that were like, I'm in for $5K, I'm in for $10K type of thing. Now, are they just talking? Is this real? I don't know. We'll see.
But I think it was cool. I mean, the little video that we had reached 100,000 people, I think, across a couple of different platforms. So it was cool. And what we decided, the takeaway from this is we got to do viral clips all the time. We got to, we got to be like Obama.
The club isn't the best place to find lover. Exactly. It's not even a conversation. This is now just a collection of clips. Yes. And the clip, the clip had 60,000 views to your Twitter clip of you talking about it.
Really? Yeah. Well, the shitty part is that it's you talking about it and me looking at— just like, it kept showing my face and you're talking the whole time and I'm just—
dude, that's the way the world goes. You put the white man's face up there, the brown guy's just in the back coming up with ideas and handing them over.
That's why they get our voices confused because they say I look like a pro but I talk like a nerd, and you look like a nerd but talk like a bro.
Dude, that was the most spot-on. I wasn't even I was like, I'm not mad at all. That is so accurate. And, um, you know, I— it makes— now I understand why people keep saying this thing that they get us confused.
I get it now. Um, let's talk about sex. Um, you have something on here, and you— before we get into it, I want to tell you a fun fact. So we have this list where Sean and I list ideas. He has one thing and it says, um, why aren't young people having sex? And what are the opportunities here? And apparently 31% of men 18 to 24 were sexually inactive before COVID Yes, inactive. Um, and the tweet was from a guy named Nat Allison, um, who does a bunch of cool stuff. The tweet's not there anymore for some reason, um, or at least I can't see it.
Uh, canceled probably. Can't say apparently you can't say men anymore.
So this guy Nat is really interesting. His name's Nat Allison, uh, Google him. He's got like a cool website. He owns this agency business. Did you know that this guy— so he's interested in this because he owns this thing called like, I'll have to look up what it's called, but it's a Kegel app.
Do you know what a Kegel is? I do know what a Kegel is. It is like exercise you do with your private parts.
Yeah. So basically it makes it so you don't premature ejaculate. And I think women do it too, you know, I don't know.
Like, I think women do it because it like, it can increase like the pleasure. But also I think it's just healthy for you to do. Like, it's just like a, it's just like a movement that's good for you, I guess. I don't know.
And this guy, his name is Eliason, Nat Eliason. He has an app called— I'll look it up what it's called.
But it should be called Squeeze. Because to do it, to do a Kegel, you're basically trying to like you know, for a guy, you're basically trying to like flex your balls. That's the best way I could describe it. Um, and, and for a girl, I'm sure there's, you know, the equivalent, but I don't know what it's called.
It's called Stamina. Stamina. I don't know what that play on words is. Anyway, it walks you through how to do these Kegel exercises and it makes like $100K a year. He just made it one time and it just ranks. It's a crazy interesting thing. Kegel exercises. I never, I never knew that was a thing.
Uh, go ahead. Um, okay, so, so we've talked about this before, and before when we said, uh, I think you actually were the original person to kind of rant about this. You were like, dude, kids aren't having sex. You're like, I went to this, you know, people make fun of you for the hot dog stand thing. They're like, we get it, you used to own a hot dog stand. The other story that I've heard you tell a number of times because it's very entertaining and I think it gets you hyped up is you went to some camp and they had a bunch of— they had like a Gen Z— like you went to some summit and they had a Gen Z analyst there. And the Gen Z analyst was like, hey, all the kids are depressed and not having sex. And then you were like, dude, what's going on? And you talked about Replica, which was this app, this messaging app where you message like a virtual girlfriend. And I tried it out. You've tried it out. Um, after you told me about it, I went and downloaded it and it was okay. It was interesting. There's definitely a bunch of people who are really into this. It's like this AI virtual girlfriend, but I have a different slant to it that I want to bring up here.
So, and by the way, this whole sex thing, this has been a problem in Japan, I think, for years, right?
Right. Yeah, there's like a, you know, the sexless generation or something they call it. Like, okay, so I want to actually talk about a company that's based in Austin, right where you're— right where you are. You might be able to see it if you look out the window. It's called Interactive Life Forms LLC. You know these guys?
Uh, yeah, I, I know where their building is.
I've seen their building. Do you know what they make?
No. Interactive— do they make sextoys?
Interactive Life Forms. This is the maker of the Fleshlight. And so I wanted to tell you about this. So I did a little research. I got a message from a founder of a tech company. Uh, I won't say his name because he said no. Uh, he said don't say his name, but he messaged me and he goes, dude, idea: modern flashlights. And I was like, what? He goes, Fleshlights. And he broke it down for me. He goes, the sex toy market is bigger than you think. He goes, female sex toys like a dildo or vibrator are on the rise. And there's this big like kind of like anti-stigma, like people trying to remove the stigma around it. I don't know if you've seen any of this, but it's like kind of the feminist movement. They call it sex positivity, which is basically like, hey, sex doesn't need to be taboo. It doesn't need to be stigma. It's okay to have sex. That doesn't make you like, you know, a bad person or something like that. And so there's this sex positivity movement, and with that has been this big boom in sales of sex toys, primarily female sex toys. So I started looking at the most popular male sex toy, which is the Fleshlight. And so here's some information about the Fleshlight. It was started by this guy Steve Shubin, and this guy's super interesting. He basically— he's one of 13 kids, he plays college football, then he goes into the Army, then he comes back and he's a police officer with the SWAT team in LA. And then he like retires from SWAT when he's like 30-something because he's like, I love being in the police force, but it doesn't pay well, so I'm gonna start a business. And his wife is a pro tennis player. So he's got this hot tennis player wife, and he's like, I'm gonna start a business. He doesn't know what he's gonna start.
And by the way, do you know who that hot wife and Steve Schubman's son is? No. Who? Aubrey Marcus, the founder of Onnit. Oh, no way. I didn't know that. Yeah. And he— Co-founded with Joe Rogan. Yes. Because Fleshlight was Joe Rogan's first sponsor that Aubrey secured. That's amazing.
Okay. So I'll get into that. That's actually a part of this. So years go by. He does nothing. Then they're in their 40s. Steve's wife gets pregnant and the doctor tells him, hey, you're in your 40s, so this is kind of like an at-risk pregnancy. So you can't, you can't be having sex. And he's like, OK, doc, like, you know, what do you want me to do? I'm a 6'3" red-blooded American. What am I supposed to do? And so he starts thinking about it and he goes, why isn't there a— why isn't there a sex toy for men. And so he originally plans to make a mannequin. And in fact, in 1998, he gets a patent for a mannequin with sexual applications. So it's basically like a doll that he wants to make. So he's trying to make this doll, and he puts in $50K, and he starts working on this doll, and he's trying to blend all these different polymers. How do you get this skin feel of this doll? How do you get the flesh to feel like flesh? How do you get it to look like a doll, feel like a doll, feel like a human? And. And he makes it a family business. So he brings his sons into the table. They get a whiteboard out and they start brainstorming together as a family, which I find hilarious because, you know, in my family, this is not a— it's not a business we could start together. So he keeps going. 2 years go by. He's put in a quarter million dollars now. He sold zero, zero, zero products so far. And he keeps trying to make this full-body doll. And he meets a guy one day, a friend of his, and his friend's like, hey, I think what you're doing is great. There's this weird taboo around this, but why not? More pleasure in the world, what's the problem? So he says, will you give me one? I'll buy one off you. And he says, cool, what's your address? I'll send you the doll. And he's like, no, dude, no way. I can't bring that doll into my house. He's like, just take out the part that's like the vagina of the doll and send me that, like put it in a little box and I'm like, my wife won't see it and just send me that. And so he's like, dude, if my friend who wants this won't, like, can't buy this doll. This doll is dead. So that's why he pivoted from the doll to just the, just the, like, you know, just the organ part of it, just a single piece, one component. And so he's like, okay, how do we brand this? So him and his sons are brainstorming, and they're like, what do guys like? Guys like tools. Okay, this thing's kind of like a flashlight. Okay, we'll call this the Fleshlight. So that's how it gets its name, uh, during that process. And so he eventually—
this was like a father-son project?
Father-son project, multiple sons. Weird, man. And so, um, now years have gone by, they've put in over $2 million, and this guy believes so much in this thing, he ramps up production. He's pumping out 1,200 units a day before they've sold anything because he's like, the world is gonna love this, they are gonna buy this thing. And, um, so he goes all in on this to meet this, you know, future demand. And turns out they actually did it. So the flashlight now These guys do, I believe, about $100 million in revenue. It's definitely above $50. They don't report it, but to me, I did some sleuthing, and I think it's a $100 million a year company, over 100 employees. They basically dominate the market for male sex toys now. And, you know, this guy who went all in on this thing, it ended up being a successful family business, which I think is, you know, just a heartwarming story.
What a crazy story. And I had heard a little bit about it, but I didn't realize, I didn't know all those details.
But by the way, this is the best part of the whole story. So he opens up a facility in Austin, so it's manufactured near you. Then he has one in Spain, and he has one somewhere else in Asia, I think. And he has so much like manufacturing capacity. So what do they do with the excess capacity when they, when they have a little extra? Guess what they make? They make prosthetics for elephants who have had their legs blown off in the, you know, from where there's mines in Southeast Asia. So they are the top maker of elephant prosthetics in Southeast Asia. That's their backup. That's their side business.
What got you interested in this?
Well, when this guy said it, I was like, you know, the founder who messaged me, he— yeah, this is— we might have to bleep this, but he goes, Dude, every guy jacks off. There's got to be a market. What if you— he's like, what if this— he's like, I don't own this product. You don't own this product. He goes, but what if this thing made it 10 times better? Isn't that crazy that there's still a taboo around this? That's going to change, dude. The sex positivity thing for women, it's going to affect men. I bet you you can make a modern-day DTC version of the Fleshlight. And so I started thinking about it and started looking up, okay, how big is this? How big is this industry? And it is a pretty big industry. Like they do like The sex toy industry itself is about $20 billion a year.
What percentage is to men? So women—
so this is kind of— I was trying to figure out the sales difference. So it's more— it's dominated by female sales. So the Fleshlight is the biggest of males, but the female industry is much bigger. About 65% of women say that they have used one. There was a stat that said 50% of male men said that they've used one, which I don't believe. I know a lot of dudes. I haven't heard one ever talk about this. So maybe it's just happening on the down low.
Like a sex toy? Yeah, like the— I've never had one conversation with a friend about it. Not a single one?
Yeah. So I don't know if I believe that stat, but basically the European market is bigger than the American market. Like places like Italy, it's like super common apparently. They're, you know, free love. Places, the fastest growing markets right now are India and China, where it's the most taboo. But what's happened is because it's all gone to e-commerce and the e-commerce companies are using very discreet packaging, like they send it to you and it looks like one thing, but inside is another. And so that's the, like, that's where this thing is growing. And so there's a bunch of startups in this space as well that are doing like $15 million a year, like Lovehoney. I like, just check out this traffic. So the top website for this, the top sort of Amazon for this thing is called Adam and Eve.
Yeah, I was just looking at Adam and Eve because they have stores all over San Francisco.
They have about 8 million visitors a month to their e-commerce store, which is a huge e-commerce store. Lovehoney has about 4 million to their store. And what's interesting is there's all these problems, all this friction in trying to build one of these companies because Stripe won't let you take payments.
They say, they say, we don't, we do not do any sexual products. So that's— so you can use Shopify, but Shopify uses Stripe, and so you can't do Shopify basically because Stripe won't allow it. So Adam and Eve, Love Honey, these companies, they can't process on Stripe. And so there's an opportunity, I think, for, you know, building Stripe for vice products, because cannabis can't use Stripe, and neither can any sex products. Porn can't use Stripe. And so if, you know, just those three industries alone, That's like multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of turnover. And so who's building Stripe for Vice? I don't know, I want to go look into that. Another one of these opportunities is that you can build a brand that figures out a new form of marketing because you can't advertise on Facebook or Instagram or any kind of display network that's mainstream for these products. And so I was looking into how do they get around this? And I was curious, how would you get around this if you were trying to market one of these products? It's an interesting sort of like job interview question I would ask somebody.
Well, I would write articles on like, you write articles that are— Yeah. So you have to write, let me, all right. So if we're talking about like a vibrator, you write an article about like sexual health, I guess, or I don't know, whatever. I mean, I would have to, I would have to do research. What a woman who is about to buy this, what is she, what type of content interests her? And I would write that article and I would display it on Outbrain or I would display it on, I don't know, where would I display it?
It's hard. So I looked into how these guys are doing it and I think there's 3 interesting—
So they use the adult ad networks like Traffic Junkie and Exoclick. So they advertise on porn sites basically. That's a given, that's an easy one. Pretty straightforward. Um, the other thing that they do is they, they do heavy like content. So, so even though you can't advertise on, um, on Facebook and you can— you're kind of limited on Google— you can do it for certain keywords and for just stuff that people are searching for. So if people are searching for what is the best one I should buy, what is, you know, reviews. And so you remember how the cat— the, the mattress company Casper was buying up the mattress review websites? And then like promoting Casper. So that's what these guys will do as well. They'll buy up the review sites and then they'll just put their products as the best reviewed product on there. And they'll say, this is, you know, I'm an affiliate for this, for this company. So that's one way. And then I thought the most innovative one, and they also do like kind of direct. So like you were saying, Fleshlight was one of the first sponsors on Joe Rogan. They'll do that. They'll go direct to podcasts or newsletters that are willing to take them as a sponsor. And they'll go for it there. But the last one I thought was interesting was what Fleshlight did. This is a little bit— this whole segment's a little bit X-rated, you know. You know, apologies if you're listening to this with kids in the car, you know, I hope you've skipped forward at this point. But basically what Fleshlight did was they wanted celebrity sponsors. So what they did was, you know, Nike goes to LeBron James and says, okay, we want you to sponsor our stuff.
So are they gonna get women to be the—
They got, they went to famous models and porn stars and they created molds of them. And so it's like, you can buy the, I forgot the, I looked up this chart of who was the top selling SKU of that. And so there's a woman, Kayla or Shayla or something like that. I don't remember her name was, but she's some model, she's some porn star. I don't know who she is, but she's famous. And they bring them in, they do a cast mold of her body, and then they turn that into a product, and then she can sell that product to her fans. And so I was thinking, if you were going to do this now, you have OnlyFans, where, you know, I think a billion, billion-plus dollars is being paid out to their creators. I would go to OnlyFans creators, and I would do this— I would do that model for them. I think that would be probably the strongest distribution tactic you could get.
Dude, what a fascinating thing. I would invest in this, but I would never work on this.
I would never work on this. I have zero interest in this from, you know, like to actually pursue it. But I do think it's one of those things that nobody talks about. And so because nobody talks about it, it's both interesting and it's surprising when you look into it, how this whole system actually works. So I like, you know, just like I love the Silk Road, but I would never go on the Silk Road and buy drugs, but I like to learn about it and see how it worked and how big it was and who was behind it and how they, kept it stealthy. Like, that's fascinating to me. Just like I like watching prison shows, but I'm not trying to go murder anybody. I like watching, you know, bank heists, but I'm not planning to rob anybody. That's how I am with these types of products.
So at the Adam and Eve store, what was it called? Yeah, Adam and Eve stores. I saw that we had so many locations in San Francisco. We probably had 3 or 4 or 5 different locations. It's a pretty huge business, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, currently owned by, I believe, a private equity company. That is also another fascinating business. Did you research that?
No, I didn't research that one, but I found one other, two other like interesting things about how they market these things I thought was pretty clever. It just shows, you know, entrepreneurial creativity here. All right. So there's one company that's doing these like, you know, like the sort of MLM model, which is you get one person who's kind of a seller for you and they have a party. So So this is like the old Tupperware parties. They call them passion parties for this. And so they have women invite their friends over and they're called passion parties where they show the different toys and what they could do or whatever. I don't know how this, this sounds like the most awkward party to me, but apparently it's working. The second one that I thought was super interesting was they basically, there was a company called Diamond Products and they make some brand of something, I have no idea. And they couldn't advertise in any traditional channel, so they went and they bought Sir Richard's Condoms Company. So they said, oh, condoms are allowed to be advertised on TV and on different websites. It's more loose to, like Trojan, right? We've all seen Trojan ads on TV, for example. So if the restrictions are looser there, they went and bought that company, and then on their website, they just, they upsell other products basically. And so he went and bought this company because he goes, they're sold in Whole Foods. He's like, this makes it so easy for me to advertise because now I own this little thing. He's like, it's my Trojan horse. Hahaha. Like, you know, this is how I advertise my sex products company. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And, you know, I think if you did this with Instagram models and OnlyFans, you could basically just copy the— what's that watch brand? MVMT. You could copy the MVMT watches brand. Model and try to, you know, they went to $100 million in sales in watches. I bet you could do the same using their influencer strategy.
Dude, how interesting. Like, I love learning from these types of people. I don't even like, I'm, I don't even like going to this. I went to the Fleshlight website. I don't even like going to that.
I think it's close the tab.
Yeah, this is work-related. My wife's dad listens to this podcast. I'm just gonna tell him, hey, don't listen to this one.
I apologize if you're Well, it was a fairly academic discussion about something. Well, the worst part is now my—
now I'm getting retargeted like crazy because I was doing research on this for the pod, and now all my ads are completely, uh, messed up.
Well, do you want to talk about another interesting person? Yes. Or do you want to talk about an idea? Person. Okay, we're going to do, uh, an interesting person. Okay, there's this guy who— we're going to do Billy of the Week here with this guy. And I, by the way, I think we're going to do this We've discussed doing this every Friday. Maybe we will. But Google—
by the way, we need like a jingle for the Billy of the Week. It needs to be like, you know, the Billy of the Week. Somebody make us a little jingle for that.
That would be pretty cool. Um, we do need that. Google Brad Kelly and make sure you spell it like B-R-A-D, so Brad, space, K-E-L-L-E-Y. Okay, if you're on your phone, do it. Brad Kelly. Now you're gonna see a picture of a guy with a red beard. You see the red beard? I see. Okay. And then 2 over, you're going to see a picture of an old guy with a longer, like, he looks like Mark Twain. Yep. See it? Black and white. So that's the same guy. The photos are just, he's just older now. So this guy, he's so interesting to me for a couple of different reasons. So this guy's name is Brad Kelly. At this point, he's probably in his 60s. And he's known as the man with a million acres. That was a headline that was written in the New York Times about him. And they wrote it about him because he is one of the largest landowners in America. At one point, he was number 3 or number 4. And he's kind of known for being incredibly reclusive. So he doesn't do any interviews. He doesn't do anything like that. But he's bad to the bone. He's a really interesting guy. And I read a little bit about him. And I've kind of got a feel for this guy. And he's so intriguing to me. So he was born, you know, he's 65 years old-ish. He was born in Kentucky. Went to college in Kentucky, but at age 19 dropped out because he started buying warehouses. And he started making enough money buying and leasing out warehouses that he goes, all right, I'm going to do this. I don't need school anymore. And eventually he started renting them out to people who were building stuff. So creating little miniature factories, he would fix them up and lease them to people. And eventually he saw that people were using them to store tobacco. And one of his tenants moved out And he got hold— they left a machine that turned tobacco and like pumped them into cigarettes or, you know, like a rolling machine or something like that. And he was like, well, I got this machine. Let's try it. And so he started making cheap cigarettes. And eventually he rolled— he made it a proper company and he called it Commonwealth Brands. And if you Google Commonwealth Brands, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I recognized some of the brands.
They're like, I think maybe he has like 15 or so cigarette brands.
Yeah. It's like, I think Parliaments, that's like When I was a kid, that was like, we would joke like if someone smokes Parliament, that means they were like a broke kid. But he made cheap cigarettes. And after 10 years, he sold the cigarette company for $1 billion. And I hate smoking. And I don't think it's cool to smoke. And he doesn't either. And he didn't hide that. He goes, I've never defended smoking. And I hope that it will be phased out of society. But I did it because, you know, I made a living doing, you know, it made a living for me. And using almost all of—
when billionaires say they're just trying to make a living, it's like, no, you made, you made like a billion livings.
That's a lot. You made a lot of livings. And with all this money, he did a couple interesting things. The first thing that he did, well, he didn't do it first, but the first interesting thing is he bought Lonely Planet. You know what Lonely Planet is?
I've heard that name. What is that? Is that a dating site? That's a dating—
I bet you if you look at your, uh, your book collection, you might have a Lonely Planet book. It's a travel website and book company. Oh, okay. And it was a big, it was a really big deal for many years. And then when digital came along, it got crushed. And he bought Lonely Planet for $70 million. And he had us, and they probably had 300 employees. And he had a kid that he liked, somehow met this young guy who was 24, and he put him as CEO. And they never signed a contract. They just shook hands and they go, all right, you're CEO now, you know, talk to me if you need me.
Such a Kentucky thing to do, to shake hands.
And this kid ran it and it didn't do so hot. I mean, it, like, it would have been cool if there was a better ending to that part of the story, right? Either through a combination of the 24-year-old sucking and COVID, they sold it, uh, for like $50 million. So he didn't make money on it. Um, but what he did with the rest of his money is he bought ranches and leased them back to the owners. And they make a little bit of profit but not a significant amount of profit. And at this point, he owns over a million acres in America, which is a huge, huge, huge amount, making him in 2012 the fourth largest landowner in America. The guy never does interviews. You can't find him if you want to. He's really hard to find. The only reason people really truly know about him is at one point he sold one of his ranches for $400 million. Really interesting guy. I like him because He's, uh, I think that like I get caught in this world on Twitter of like, oh, build in public, you know, what's your MRR? I got to go to executive coaching. And it's so nice to hear from a guy. This guy actually seems like a pretty thoughtful guy, but he definitely gives off the redneck vibe. Uh, obviously he's highly intelligent, but they say that like he goes to his ranches and he likes to drink bourbons bourbon and wear a kilt. So he's like kind of a wild guy.
He's into some weird shit.
All right. Yeah. But pretty interesting guy. And I wanted to bring this guy up because I bet most people have never heard of him. But so interesting. He also owns, do you know what Kentucky Downs is? The horse track? Yeah. He owns that. Oh, wow. And so he just owns all types of real estate and that's what he put all of his money into. Very interesting person. Yeah, this is, this is cool.
So why were you saying the part about people who have like executive coaches and what was the contrast there? So explain that one.
Like I see people who've got like small-ass companies who like are not even there, they're like barely just started and they're like tweeting out like leadership quotes or they're talking about like how they need to be more inclusive at their company or this and that.. And I just get sick of this hype thing. And I see all the people like, oh, build in public. And I'm guilty of all this as well. But like all the— and we're part of the hype cycle, right? We're media. But it's cool to see someone who you've never heard of who just is anonymous and shuts the fuck up and just works and does cool stuff and has a cool life. And it's entirely like, you know, everyone's like— I got in a fight on Twitter about people which— about buying domain names. You think this guy knows how to buy a domain name? In one of the interviews, he said he doesn't know how to use email.
Right. Yeah, this guy's not vegan. Yes.
No, this guy eats vegans. Right.
This guy is made of leather. Yeah. Okay. So you just like that he's like kind of like a tough guy, rough guy, business guy, doesn't give a fuck. And everybody else, you know, makes such a big deal of little things is kind of what—
I just think it's cool to see, to hear different perspectives. And I'm sure that he does a lot of bad stuff. I mean, he owned a cigarette company, right? Like, that's kind of pretty shitty. But it was just cool. It's cool to have a different perspective. And this guy, if you Google him, I'm pretty sure there's only 3 pictures that I've— I've researched this guy a lot. I've only found 3 pictures of him. And he's worth $3 or $4 billion. I like it. All right.
He is indeed the Billy of the Week. I wonder who— I wonder how people will react to this guy, because I think some people are like so anti-cigarettes that they're like, you are, you know, that you're saying that you're kind of idolizing this guy who is a, you know, who did bad things, like, you know, like a warlord almost. And so I don't know. You were the one who also said you would not invest in Juul, right?
Was that you? Yeah. Look, I'm not defending this person's actions, but I think that no matter how evil or horrible someone is, there's— you can always find something interesting. Maybe saying admirable is a bit of a stretch, but you can always find something interesting no matter how bad someone is. And I don't think this guy is necessarily a bad guy, but yeah, he— I mean, he fucking— he sold poison. Yeah, it's pretty right. See, I think of it—
I think— I don't know, maybe I'm a little disconnected from reality, but for me, I'm like, I don't like movies where everybody is a good guy. I would not play a game a video game where you just walk around as a good Samaritan. Like, those aren't fun to me. And I think that the real world has all kinds of people, shapes, colors, beliefs, all, all kinds of different things. And I'm interested in the variety of ways that people live their life. And I'm glad that people live their life doing all these different things, even though a lot of them are like villains, or a lot of them— I'm not saying this guy's a villain, but like I think that's just the way the world is, and I think it's crazy to believe that the world shouldn't be that way or won't be that way, where people are going to live their life doing different things. Maybe this guy likes to drink bourbon and wear a kilt on a farm that he owns. Like, all right, great. I'm glad that character exists. I'm glad that, you know, I'm glad these characters exist. I think that most people will not feel that way. Most people will say, well, if this person's a bad guy, you know, he shouldn't exist. And I don't know, I I find that to be— that's just not the way I think about it.
I believe every great man or every great woman is also a bad man. So what I mean by that is if you are at all— if you're considered great at anything or one of the best, inevitably you have many enemies because you can't make everyone happy right now.
By the way, can you tweet that out? So I'm doing this thing, I'm getting behind me— one of the things that's going to go behind me is I'm getting these laser-etched signs that are tweets. Basically, it's called lasertweets.com, and so you can basically get any tweet turned into a wooden laser-etched sign. And I'm gonna put— I'm gonna hang a couple of my favorite quotes and tweets behind me. And one of them, one of my favorites, is, "Every great man is also a bad man." And so I need you to tweet that out so that I can do it. But what you can't do is— you can't— or you can do "person" if you want to not make it gender-specific here. But I need you to tweet that out so I can get that one made.
Yeah, you're gonna get on my wall. I don't think I made— I think I made up that phrasing, but, uh, I read it in a book and, uh, I don't remember exactly how they phrased it, but that's how I phrased it. But I believe it to be true. And dude, I did so much research on this guy that I went and I went to Land forums. So a really interesting research tactic that you should do is you type in whatever you're searching for, like Fleshlight, and then you type in forum. Right. And then you are brought to user-generated content of message boards and what people are saying. Or you could do the same thing, but you just type in the word Reddit. It's pretty sick. And I went to land forums where this guy bought people's land, and they go, yeah, you know, or someone's like, hey, this guy named, uh, Brad Kelly offered to buy my land. Who sold to him? And people were like, yeah, we sold to him. Uh, he's fine enough, done, but doesn't bother us and offered us a fair deal. And so they're like, well, and we all— and people said, well, and we read about him doing cigarettes and that kind of sucks, but he's never caused us a problem. So anyway, every great man is also a bad man.
I like it. Uh, did you want to do any, any of these other ones or are we saving them? Uh, I think this one should—
they should be saved.
Okay, I have one quick one because I don't really have much to say, but we talked—
or we could do the NDVC one.
Okay, I'm gonna do one quick plug for these guys that took an idea we talked about and they made it. So we talked about levels.fyi, which is a salary comparison website. We had a whole episode about like open salaries and should you or should you not, transparent data, how that helps, blah blah blah. And we said, hey, Levels does this for the tech industry where you can go see, all right, if I'm a Facebook product manager level 5, what will I make if I live in Seattle? What will I make if I live in San Francisco? What's the benchmark? What are the— what is some data so I know if I'm getting— if I'm getting hosed, if they gave me a fair job offer or not fair job offer?. And so we said, dude, somebody should do this for other industries because this is awesome. Um, why isn't this happening in others? So these guys made medlevels.fyi and it's basically doctor pay. Um, and so they, if you go to it, you can see they don't have a ton of data yet, but, um, they're getting some, they're getting doctors to put in how much they're getting paid based on where they live and what type of doctor they are. I think it's great, super simple. It's just basically an Airtable displayed on a website. So really easy to build.
Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying, like, in theory, right? It's like such a simple, simple product to do. So medlevels.fyi, good, good job by those guys. And if you're a doctor listening, go put your shit in there.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was looking at this. Um, all right, we'll wrap it up by talking about one more thing, and maybe we should put this in the beginning, but let me ask you, how has your angel investing gone? So far, I'll tell you in 10 years.
That's the problem with angel investing.
But how many deals have you invested in?
Uh, I think a little under 20, maybe like 18, something like that. 18 companies we've invested in, deployed about, I don't know, $1.5 million, $2 million, something like that.
And do you feel confident that you have some winners?
Uh, yeah, definitely there's some winners. Um, now we'll see. I think any— anything, anything can happen. But I would say I'd be surprised if out of these 18 if we don't have, you know, 2 companies that are worth $1 billion or more. I'd be surprised.
So, wow, that's pretty sick. So we, um, a few weeks ago I tweeted out something that Andrew Chen said. Basically, I asked Andrew Chen, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, what his advice to me for angel investing was, and he told me his opinion, and I tweeted that out. People shit on me even though I was like, I'm not saying this, I'm just— or I'm just like, I'm the messenger. Yeah. Like I'm just like reporting on someone interesting's opinion, but I did tend to agree on a couple of the things. And one of them was that there's this narrative that you, there's this narrative of people who hate VC and they're like, I would rather grow slower. And it's like, okay, that's cool. Do that. But in order to—
and they also say profits matter, you know, like, and they love to mock Silicon Valley companies. They're like, dude, these guys, you know, They don't know anything about profits. Sorry, I'm just over here running a profitable business, just growing steady every year. And so they like to get on that kind of high horse.
Which is crazy because like both can exist and be wonderful. But there was this guy who I really like, and I don't mean to shit on him at all. It was called IndieVC. And it was kind of weird. I don't know why it was a venture capital firm because its whole shtick was basically we invest in bootstrap businesses that want to grow slowly. They didn't exactly say slowly, but it was for bootstrapped companies, which is again a little bit of an oxymoron. Why is a bootstrapped company going to be taking venture capital, right? But a lot of people really liked it. And the guy who ran it, I forget his name, I met with him, awesome guy, and they went out of business this week. And I think his name— Bryce. I like Bryce. Bryce is a good guy, but the model didn't work. And I wanted to bring this up because something that Andrew said was, he said two things. He said, uh, invest in quantity. So just kind of throw money at a bunch of stuff. So like anything that seems promising, just kind of mindlessly invest in it. And second, make sure it's growing 3x a year. If it's not, then it's not good. And a lot of people didn't like when I said that, and they didn't like it, I think, because it kind of hurt their feelings of like, well, you're saying I'm not worthy of venture capital. And the answer is, is yeah, you're not. You're not, but that's okay. You shouldn't be offended. Right.
You don't have to shut down your business. That just means this type of asset, this type of venture capital is chasing a certain profile of company and you may not fit that profile.
And by the way, I think that most people, I bet you, I mean, this sounds so douchey. I bet you I've made significantly more money than a lot of people who have raised Absolutely.
And so I was telling somebody this the other day. I was like, um, I was like, you know, media companies— we're talking about media companies, and you know, you guys just sold your— you guys are a media company, and it wasn't the biggest exit ever. It's not like, you know, some insane thing, but I was like, dude, he— I don't know, how much did you raise total? Like $1.5 million, $2 million, something like that?
$1 million. $1 million, right?
So it took so little money, and then not— so give the profile. It was $1 million, and it took you how many years from start to finish?
Not finish, but liquidity. Start as in we raised money to finish, less than 5 years, and I made 8 figures.
Right. Exactly. And so, and you owned, you know, majority of the business or whatever. So like, because you didn't have to raise all this money and dilute yourself over and over and over again from round after round after round. And it's like there are, if you look at companies that are selling for a billion dollars where the founder owns 4% or 2% or 7%, and they sweated it for 10 years and every hair on their head is gray because of that path. So it doesn't— the size of the exit is not linked really to the outcome for the founder themselves.
I agree, which proves that we're not— or I know, speaking for myself, and I think you're not shitting on this idea of anti-VC, whatever, but this company went out of business and it goes against this narrative of like, if you're gonna give money to venture capital, or companies that fit the profile of VC, you want them to be what many would just think or describe as reckless. Right. And that's—
One thing I didn't get, why did they go out of business? So basically they couldn't raise more money was the idea. Yeah. Right? That's how a VC fund goes out of business. And he said in his thing, he's like, we invested in 10 companies or whatever. He gave some numbers. So tell me, but he goes, they were all bootstrapped and profitable, and they're all still going. And they're 40— you know, he said something like, we've invested in these, they're all still going, they're all still profitable, but we couldn't raise any more money. It's like, what do you— I don't understand. What is his reason? Why did they go out of business? He kind of sounded like he was crying a little bit. Like, he was kind of whining because he's like, our LPs didn't like our model, so they pulled the plug because, you know, whatever. I didn't read the thing very carefully, so you tell me. You looked into this. No, I mean, yeah. Why is he saying they failed? I don't think he was whining.
I think he was just saying the fact that like most people don't like this idea and weren't willing to stick it out. And I don't blame them because if you go to Indie.BC, the website, it's a video of a unicorn head on fire as if like they're anti-unicorn. And in my head, I'm like—
If his returns are good. If his returns are good, —people would still be looking to back the fund because people who invest in VC funds—
But the returns aren't as good as other stuff like— Right.
So that's what he needs to say. It's not that people don't like this. He needs to say, I was wrong. My returns weren't as good as I thought they would be, and they were not good enough to get more money. Because people invest— I invest in VC funds. I also would invest in real estate, which has a different profile. I'll invest in crypto, which has a different return, risk-return profile. I invest in many things. And so That's why I thought it was kind of whining because I didn't— he didn't just say the honest truth. I had this idea that this would be a great way to invest, but my returns were actually shitty, and therefore, I couldn't raise more money. And either that's true, or his returns were actually good and he sucked at going and getting new investors. I didn't— there's only two ways to go about it, right? Like, I didn't understand. I didn't— I stopped reading because I didn't— he wasn't saying the truth, in my opinion.
No, I mean, he said the truth. He said that, like, our strategy, a lot of LPs bailed. It cost us 80% of our LP base. They didn't want to come back. And it was just, yeah, the strategy didn't work in the sense of investors—
Did he post his returns? No. Okay, that's the thing he needed to say, right? He's saying they didn't like our strategy. It was so— He was kind of just like patting himself on the back, I felt. He's like, they didn't like that we were going against the grain, going against the VC thing, and they had to pull out because of that. It's like, well, is it that they didn't like what you were doing? Or is it that it wasn't working and the returns weren't very good and they didn't believe the returns were gonna be very good? I don't know. I'm being harsh on the guy. I don't know the guy.
But no, he's cool. And I'm not bringing this up to show them. I think it's cool. He took a shot. It was a bad shot though. And that's, that's great, right? You take swings, sometimes you miss for sure. But I think though, it's important. It's important that we look at what this What does this mean here? And I think that someone like Andrew Chen, who's this— from the outside, you think of him as like an elitist, like went to— I don't know, he just like gives this vibe that he's like an elitist type of guy. But— and he kind of represents a lot of people like him, right? These like VCs who are like, oh, like fuck these tech bros. And the reality is, though, is that that strategy of like doing stuff that appears to be reckless from the outside it is the right strategy. It just feels really uncomfortable for a lot of people.
Dude, if you— it's a classic, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's not that VCs decided, oh, you know what I'll do? I'm going to invest in a bunch of companies and 1 or 2 will return the fund and everything else will go to zero. It's not that they want that, right? That's actually extremely stressful for them. That, hey, if I get into this company that becomes a $10 billion plus company, I'm a hero and I'm the best. And if I just miss them and I invest in a bunch of other good companies that didn't quite get there, I suck and I can't raise my next fund and I'm out of a job. And so it's crazy to me that like, they're not picking this, that just is the nature of the game and they have to play it if they want to succeed at it. It's like in any game theory, the game will, the players in the game will eventually find the meta game, the strategy that is the optimal strategy. And if you just, because of your, like, you know, your opinion and your personality and your morals don't want to play it, cool, that's fine. But you're just not going to get— you're not going to be playing the optimal strategy, you're going to eventually lose the game. And so I think it's crazy that people hate the VCs when it's just that's the way that innovation works. The innovations that break through become humongous, and the innovations that don't become zeros, and or close to zeros, and the winners are so big that that's they dominate all the returns.
But then there's this other ground where it's like FVC, which me personally, I'm on that boat where I want to be a VC, but I don't want to take VC money. And that's this other group of people. It's like, dude, they all can exist.
Right. And that's why that quote is so insightful, right? Don't hate the player, hate the game. Cool. You can hate the game. That's allowed. That's in the quote. You're allowed to hate the game and say, I'm going to play a different game. No problem. You can play games where you bootstrap, where you don't raise VC money, where you you don't do business at all, you go be an employee somewhere, no problem. That's always an option.
Well, I guess we just did our little rant, but I wanted to bring that up. We'll see if this episode turns out to be anything interesting. Abreu, how'd we do? B+. I want the graphics guys to like slam a big B+ all over the screen.
All right, why B+? You got to give the people that— your explanation. Why are you saying what you're saying?
I mean, I— it was good research, but it just wasn't as juicy as it could be. It was good. I've never seen Sean more animated than when he talks about flashlights, by the way. Yeah, I was super into that, to be honest. I, uh, it got ruined when I went to the website. It's pretty freaking disgusting. But did you go to the website? No, I did all my research. I didn't go to their website. It's not great. It's pretty gross. Um, but no, I think it's interesting. I think what we'll have to do is, um, I think, uh, like if we did an entire episode on flashlight or an entire episode on this guy Brad Kelly, I think it would be crazy fascinating. Um, more—
I thought, I thought Brady was saying I went too much into it.
No, that the flashlight was the best part. I'm just saying you were very animated about it. Yeah, I would do—
and I, I have, I have space, but it's cold, so I have to talk in an animated way to like not freeze my ass off.
You're passionate about flashlights. It's Okay, so I've been listening. I listen to a true crime podcast every night, which is weird that I'm in bed like with my wife about to go to sleep hearing about like how this guy just like murdered and raped these people. Um, but it's this one lately called Generation Y. It's really popular, and all it is is two guys discussing crimes and mysteries ranging from 9/11 to serial murders to the Bermuda Triangle, all that, all that type of thing. And all they're doing is talking and retelling a story We should definitely just do that with one interesting person. Yeah, I think that's great.
Although if it's not true crime, I don't know how interesting people— how interested people would be in it.
If you told a 60 to 70 to 90-minute story in the same way that you told that flashlight story, people would love it. I could tell because I was enthralled by it.
What's the first story we could tell?
How could we try it? Well, one time we talked about this, the French Bill Gates, that guy was so intriguing to me.
60 Minutes, that's like, you can really only tell like your own story or like some something you really go or like, you know, the American Kingpin story, you can like retell it, retell the book basically as a podcast.
Well, that's what you're doing at the end of the day, which is you're just reading 15 articles and you're telling the long story about it. And what you could do is, uh, one of us is the more, more researched and the other one listens and asks questions. Okay. All right, I'm down to try it if you have an idea. Am I wrong, Abreu? I mean, it could work. I'm just— I don't know how you can make it that exciting. Like true crime, there's suspense, there's mystery, you know what's gonna happen. I don't— I guess business, maybe like big business scandals you could do that with? No, dude, you do it exactly like he did the flashlight.
The origin stories. Yeah, I think origin stories are good, right? That's what I tried to do with the flashlight guy. I was like, basically you tell how this thing came to be. So I think you could do it that way. It works. I don't, I, but I agree with John.
I don't know how you get 60 to 90 minutes out of it.
I think you basically, forget the 60 to 90 minutes. That doesn't matter. It could be 20 minutes. It's no issue, but It's like just a well-told story, a well-researched and therefore well-told story about something that happened. I honestly know, like, for me, I started listening to this YouTube channel that basically is like— it's like book summaries but actually done good. I actually like it. And what's it called? It's called Productivity Game. As a YouTube— it's a YouTube channel with about half a million, I think, subscribers or something like that. Um, I could be wrong on that, but it has a lot of subscribers. Um,, but I've listened to probably 10 of their book summaries of just books I've had, I bought, I just haven't got to. I'm like, do I really want to go read like Made to Stick? Or can I just like watch this 7-minute video and like, oh, those are the 4 principles of Made to Stick. Cool. I still might read the book, but now I know if it's like interesting or not. And so similarly, I'm reading like, you know, whether it's like, for example, I read this book, PayPal, whatever, the PayPal origin story or whatever. If we just retold that, It's like, you know, just take the book and then turn it into a 20-minute retelling of the story. Um, I think that's pretty—
that could be pretty— well, I know that would work. American Kingpin would be great. There's this awesome podcast called We Study Billionaires, which sounds lame, but honestly, it's like, you guys know, it's— they're huge and it's really good. Um, and they'll read a book on someone or just a long article and just retell the story, right? It's really good. I love this podcast. It's called The Investor's Podcast. You never heard of this? Press and Pish? Yeah, they're good, man.
I know they're— I know their thumbnail, the red thumbnail.
They're huge. Yeah, 40 million downloads they have, so that would work. Um, I guess we're— we should publish what us talking right now. But speaking of books, you know what I'm doing is— this isn't the one I'm doing with it. I'm just gonna read one book this year, but I'm gonna study the fuck out of it. I'm sick of reading like 2 books a month and not remembering anything.
Yeah, I'm just— for me, like, YouTube is just so much better. Like, I'm just going deep on, like, you know, like Charlie Munger, Peter Lynch YouTube stuff, and I'm just like watching, watching so many of their videos or listening to their videos, and there's just a lot of wisdom in there. And Charlie Munger said this thing, he's like, he's like, I don't want to read the news. He goes, I want to read something that it made sense 30 years ago, it makes sense today, it's going to make sense 30 years from now. And I'd rather just read that 10 times than read like whatever the latest thing is. And that's kind of what you're saying.
Yeah, I agree. All right, well, let's bounce.
I'm gonna get my shit set up by the next podcast better.
Days off on the road, let's travel, never looking back. Like, feeling like gold, I don't want to hide it. Ain't nobody telling me no more, catch your feels, we'll let them like go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, feel like I can rule the world, I can rule the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like I'm on top of the world.