#163 - Plugins Making Millions, Gumroad's Crazy Valuation & Why a Studying App is Going Viral

Dude, a freaking plugin. Who would have thought? And he kind of had like a funny shit-eating grin on. And I was like, how big are you guys? He was like, we do over $100 million a year in sales. And I was like, would you ever believe it? He was like, yeah, I thought it could be done. And then, and then I go, you just raised money? He goes, yeah, we raised $100 million the other day. I go, why? He goes, because it's north of a billion dollar valuation. Yeah, I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no day He's off on the road, let's travel, never looking back.

What's up everybody? We just recorded the pod. We talked about, uh, I was on CNBC today, so we talked about going on TV, going on CNBC. We talked about a bunch of business ideas that are Chrome extensions, which is kind of like a niche that nobody really talks about, but Sam's super into it and, uh, we brought the fire. And then at the end we shoot the shit about a bunch of random things in maybe the last 10 minutes, uh, talking about you know, some of the stuff from the Michael Saylor episode and some cool stuff we have going on. We just shoot the shit at the end. That might have been the best part. So stick around for that last 10 minutes of the pod. All right.

Enjoy. All right, great. What's going on? Congratulations. Do you want to talk about family stuff or no?

Yeah, sure. Had a kid 4 or 5 days— 4 days ago, I think now.

Congratulations. What are the details?

Baby boy is here. His name is Banks and Banks? Why Banks? Uh, I don't know. We thought of the name a lot when we were trying to name my first kid, and we just— and her name's Blush, and so I just thought Banks and Blush go well together. Um, I don't know, I just thought it was a cool name.

Wanted to do something cool.

Name—

it's a cool name, it's just a unique name, so I was wondering if there was a reason.

Yeah, at least this one is a name. Uh, the first one, when we named her Blush, we Googled like, oh, Blush name meaning, and there's literally like— it's like, that is not a name, bro. So what is Banks? Banks is a popular last name, and because of that, some people started doing it as a first name. Hillary Duff's kid is named Banks. I know that. That's pretty much the extent of the popularity of it. I don't really care to pick a popular name. I'd rather pick a unique name. But I could tell, like, when we tell our family, they're like, what? Is there— is there a nickname? What are we going to do with this?

No, Banks is good. My nephews are named Avett, like the Avett Brothers, and Jude, like Hey Jude. And then now they have a girl named Billie. So I'm team odd names.

There you go. I know we can't all be Sams, right?

Or, well, people call you Shen.

Yeah, there's people that just straight call me Shane and they just keep calling me that and I just am not correcting them. And I've just— now it's like we're years into the relationship. It's like vendors that I work with.

It's like, well, well, congratulations. So you're a year and a half older than me. I am. I'm 31. I For the longest time I was like, I'm gonna wait to have kids. But then a few things happened. The first, so my wife Sarah's 28. The first is that a few of my friends, one of them's 39. And I think your wife's older than you, right?

Yeah, by a year.

So like early, mid-30s. And then a few of my friends are late 30s. And these women are having kids and they're like, oh my God, it sucks so bad. I wish I would've done it when I was younger. Right. So I've changed my— I'm like, I've thought about having—

wait, the guy is saying that or the woman?

No, the woman. Well, the guys are like, it's definitely harder to parent when you're in your 40s than when you're younger. But mainly from the woman, they're like, it's just harder on the body. And second, I had a friend and he was like, dude, have a kid now. I was like, why? Like, I want to have all this freedom. He goes, it's way different. Once I had a kid, I realized the later that I had it, the less years I'm going to be able to spend with him. And now I'm just gonna die sooner. And I wish I would've had 10 more years and done it at 25 than 35. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting perspective. So my opinion has been changing lately. I might have a, a child soon, but we're still deciding. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, before we get to the first idea, congratulations on CNBC. You were on there today. Did anyone reach out to you and because they saw you?

Not really. Only people who knew me already, you know, like my mom was probably the most excited, you know, basically like people who are 30 years older than me were like, this is amazing. CNBC, this is the shit. I was on CNBC for 2 and a half minutes or 3 minutes or something like that. And so, but nobody, you know, like, I don't know if I go tweet something, I'll get a lot more messages than, than going on TV, which is weird. But it definitely was a cool feeling. And like, I don't know, it's like one of those things that like, I woke up before my alarm clock because I was like, okay, today's a good day. Today's a big day. I got something to do today that I've never done before.

These these broadcast networks, like, you think they're huge, and they are huge, and they have reach and all that, but like the average viewers is only like 200,000 people at a time. It's not, uh, it's not like crazy high in the world of social media.

Yeah, and I think even the big ones that are like half a million or a million viewers, they are— it's like, it's a kind of like a background thing. So, and you only get so little time to talk that even if there was a much bigger audience, it's hard to get like it's hard to really make any headway in a 3-minute segment.

Yes. So like it's— I— it's prestigious, but it's definitely not nearly as impactful as just the actual tweet that you're coming on to talk about.

It was— or this podcast, right? More people will listen to this podcast and I'll get more mileage out of this. It just doesn't have the same— it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't get the juices flowing in the same way that being on CNBC does. But I also say this— this is what I think is more interesting. For anybody who's ever done this, have you ever gone on? It's such a weird experience. Have you ever gone on a TV thing? So you get connected in and it's like a Zoom call basically right now. And you can't see them. So on TV, it looks like you're all like split screen. Like you see your face, their face, another person. But in reality, you have no— there's no facial expressions because you can't see each other's video. So you're only hearing each other. You don't know when it's your turn to talk. And then the thing I screwed up, because I was like, I was going down this checklist of like worry. I was like, okay, is my home internet going to be good? All right. Is my, you know, is my hair going to look stupid? Am I going to say something stupid? Am I going to? And then like, it's never like the things you expect. It's always something else. So as soon as it started, I was like, like 10 seconds in, you'll look, if you watch the video, my eyes are like darting around everywhere because I have nothing to look at. They're not on video. And so I'm just like looking around my stupid, like home studio garage thing. And I look like it, like, I look like a suspicious character because my eyes are so shifty. And then like 30 seconds in, I realized, oh shit, I need to be staring at this camera because that's what will look normal. And so that was like a weird thing I did. And the other thing was I said Kim Kardashian's butt and I said, I know, I thought that was funny balls and stuff. So I said some stuff maybe I wasn't supposed to say.

No, they came. You're— it was good. You were a good interview. It was great. I watched the whole thing. It was good. Thank you.

All right.

You want to talk about the first idea?

Yeah, let's do it.

You want to do this thing, Toucan? Yes. Okay. So I, along with Joe Speiser, we— I'm kind of following in your footsteps a little bit. We created this thing, HamptonVC.com, and we're just investing. We're just investing in companies together.

Nothing.

I grew up in a bad neighborhood on the street called Hampton, and Joe is wealthy and has a house in the Hamptons. All right. We were thinking about names and I was like, I grew up on the street called Hampton. You live in the Hamptons.

It's just your own money or it's a fund?

We're mostly our own money. But him and I— Joe's an investor in your thing.

Yeah.

And he would like, man, I want to put even more money in. He goes, you just want to invest with me? I go, yeah, sure. And then he's like, you want to do a rolling fund? I was like, no, that sounds like a lot of work. Yeah, he's like, you want to do a syndicate and you can just pick some deals? I go, okay, cool, I'll do it with you. Right. So it's just like a deal-by-deal basis. So we created an AngelList syndicate, which— so then basically whenever, whenever you invest in something, Sean, you have, you have to tell me and then I'll invest.

Yeah, dude, I have a bunch. Also, I heard this great description of AngelList, which is like it's Substack for VCs, which is like the easiest way to kind of like spin up a little investment fund the same way.

Great.

Substack lets you spin up a little newsletter. It's awesome.

So yeah, we did it and like So we— I found a company already, um, and we invest, and I was just going to invest, like, I was going to do like maybe 10 to 50 deals using my own money a year of like ranging from really low to $5,000 all the way up to $25,000. Yeah. I was just going to do a ton of stuff, but all low prices. And, um, he was like, why don't you just do this syndicate thing? And I was like, all right, let's try it. So doing that, but can I tell you about the first company that we we are about to finish with.

So I know, I know about this company, but give the, give the, what is your kind of like 2-sentence description of it?

Yes, exactly. So it helps you learn a new language without the effort. I would say it's kind of genius, honestly. The founder, what's her name, Taylor something?

She's magical.

She's great. She's been a fan of the podcast, actually. She messaged us a long time ago, like before this fundraise, being like, hey, the pod is cool, check out what I'm doing.

Or maybe I actually really— oh, I can't believe I missed it.

Have you talked? Yeah, do it. If you don't know her well, I can try to introduce you and you can just do it directly with her. But this woman's a superstar. I met with her and like within 5 minutes I was like, oh, well, you're going to be the CEO of a billion-dollar company.

Like, oh, really? Okay.

I hope it's this one. But like, she was just so put together. She was so poised. She was charismatic. She just— she just oozed CEO.

Interesting. I've never heard you say that. Who else have you felt that about? If there's— if there's anyone come to mind?

The guy from Superhuman. Whenever I heard him talk, I was like, oh yeah, like, you are a— so you— I would bet on you for just about anything.

Yeah, whatever he was gonna do. If he said, I'm gonna write a book, I'd be like, oh, it's gonna be great.

Yeah, I was like, you know what I mean? Pretty sure you're gonna be successful. Yeah, so I felt that about him. Um, when we met with the Shopify guy, Harvey, or Harley, Harley, uh, I kind of— but obviously he's already hugely successful. But like, there was a handful of people we've interviewed.

When he came in, he just had camera quality like nobody's business. And so you just had this good-looking guy in this great-looking office with an incredible camera. And I feel like, you know, he couldn't even say a word. I was like, oh, wow, this guy's like a power player.

Yeah. And so this woman, I felt that with her. I was like, oh, you— she just, she just was on top of it. I just felt great. Another person, and this is a little bit early on in their experience, was this woman named Payal. I think that's her name, who started ClassPass. Payal, Payal, Payal. When I talked to her, I was like, oh, you're really special. So anyway, this woman Taylor, I met with her, I was like, oh, you're whatever. Yeah, sounds good. I'm in no matter what. And so, but I started like also, I mean, let's, we'll just, we'll move on past Toucan, but it's join toucan.com. The reason it's interesting is they have this like head— she worked at Headspace, so they have this like Headspace cute branding shit, right?

By the way, we should say Toucan is like the bird Toucan Sam type of thing. It's, it's not. Yeah, it's spelled like that. T-O-U-C-A-N. Yeah.

Toucan. Um, which I don't know, do those birds like speak or something?

I don't know why. Maybe, maybe that might be it. Yeah. So, so do you have any kind of stats that you can share about them? Like give us a sense of why you feel like this is working.

Oh yeah, my buddy was with the guy who started it.

Isn't that worth like a billion dollars?

Uh, not yet, but getting close. It's several hundred millions. I think it was the last round.

And all it does is, uh, screen recording recordings.

Yeah.

I was like, oh my God, you pulled it off.

Yeah, they did it. Exactly. Um, so those are like the big successors, but there are some other ones, right? So we have Pinterest was started as, I believe, a Chrome extension. So it was the pin button that basically was able to get all the content for Pinterest to be a cool app. You needed a quick way to pin while you were surfing the web. So that was one. And then there's others that, like, for example, if I look at the plugins that I have installed, I have Adblock or uBlock Origin or whatever. That's definitely one of them. And so I think this was one of those non-obvious ideas because it kind of feels like not a serious company. It's like, dude, you're just making this like plugin. And definitely there's a lot of people like my mom doesn't know what Chrome extensions are. She doesn't know there's a Chrome extension store. She doesn't really know how to install them. Like she knows apps, but she doesn't know Chrome extensions. So you're going to get a little bit more of a tech savvy audience. You know, it's a smaller market overall, but the friction is a big deal.

Actually, she does Grammarly because of that. Um, she saw it and she's self-conscious about her English because she learned English later in life and she's like, doesn't want to write something stupid. So she downloaded Grammarly for that reason actually.

And so that's why when I saw this Toucan thing, I was like, oh, you guys just run a commercial for this on TV. That's easy. You're going to get so many users. And the, the plugin, the reason why the plugins are interesting to me is the churn is so low. Churn on plugins are so low compared to iPhone apps or—

and we both, we both have plugins. You have a plugin for The Hustle. I have a plugin for my, my One Big Thing framework of just like, what's the churn on it? One, there's like no churn on it. Do we have like thousands of users now? The engagement's not super high. Like they don't always use the thing. But they leave it installed. And it's like, you know, so we've both dabbled in this, not seriously, I would say neither of us took it super seriously. But we were interested enough for both of us to build a Chrome extension and get it out there to, you know, 5,000-10,000 people.

It's interesting. And I think that Uh, um, I just think that people discount it and I think that it's far more, it's far more interesting than most people realize. And so I actually had a Brai pull some of the biggest, uh, plugins. So it's, uh, Adblock, Adblock Plus, Adobe Acrobat. What do you use Adobe Acrobat for?

I don't know. Probably like Flash or something.

I don't know. Um, SafePrice, which is a deal thing, video conferencing from Cisco, Google Translate, which is kind of an indicator about for Toucan, which is interesting. Honey, Pinterest Save Button, Skype. What's TamperMonkey?

I don't know, it looks like it's trying to keep you safe. There was a cool one called Ghostery back in the day that would just show you who's trying to track you on every website you go to. That was kind of cool. And try to shut that down. There's also these paid ones. So was there anything interesting in the paid group?

No, but tell me about the ones that you've invested in because they're actually similar, because I— and so in this document that we have, I said screenshots would be great. And you said, oh, I invested in this thing called Bubbles, which I remember you telling me about it. But what is that?

Bubbles is a lot like Loom, which we talked about earlier. So the idea is, how do you easily share what's on your screen with your coworker who wants to see it and be able to— and so how do you do that? Some people just take a screenshot, right? They use the hotkey on their keyboard, they take a screenshot, and it goes into their desktop file. Then they have to go grab that Then they drag and drop that to their friend and then the friend has to comment on it, but they can't comment on it. They have to like send it back as another file. It's kind of annoying, right? So what Bubbles does is much simpler. It says it's a little Chrome extension and on any page you go to, you can say, I want to record a screen recording, like a video. I want to take a screenshot or my favorite one is a scroll screenshot. So like, you know, when you're on a website that like is long and you want to take screenshots of the website, you have to take like 8 screenshots and then send them as separate files to somebody.

Yeah.

It's a pain in the ass.

With this, it just takes one long screenshot and sends it to to the person. So it's, it's easy to capture the, what's on your screen. You can then comment like bubbles. So it's like a speech bubble. So you just click anywhere where you want to point something out on the screen. Like let's say for the Hustle, you want to make the trends website better. You would click bubbles. You would record a screenshot. You would tap on the part of the screen where you're like, this thing is stupid. We need to change this. And you would write, this thing is stupid. We need to change this. And then that's a, the whole file is a link. You just share a link with somebody else and they can comment back like a Google Doc. And so is it doing well? Yeah, it's doing well. It's doing well specifically, actually, the niche, initial niche that they've done well with is agencies. And so agencies like creative agencies, there's always creative people within the team that are sending ideas, mockups, concepts back and forth with each other, and then they have to share with the client also, and the client has to give feedback. So there's a lot of showing screen stuff and commenting back and forth on it. And so that's where they're getting initial foothold. And I think it'll kind of break out from there. So it's like Loom, but it does more than what Loom does.

And what's Dashworks?

So Dashworks is a company I invest in that is, um, it's like the homepage for your company. So this is, this is a Chrome extension that's sold to companies. So let's say, um, somebody joins the hustle, you give them their laptop. If you work with Dashworks, when they, when they open up their Google Chrome for the first time to use the internet, they would not just see like the generic Google, like, new tab page, they would see, like, the Hustle's branded page. And that page can do 3 things. One, there's a search bar, and you could type in anything into that search bar, and it'll find the file inside your company. So, like, most companies now use Slack and Google Drive and Dropbox and Asana and GitHub and, like, all these different tools that are all in the cloud. So, like, if you've ever been on your MacBook and you want to find a file, you just use, like, the little Spotlight search finder, right? You just type it into Spotlight, it finds the file on your computer. But the thing is now with the cloud, none of the files you need are on your computer. They're all in the cloud. So this is basically that search bar for all your cloud apps. So now, so what it does is it helps any, any employee find any file that's in your network without knowing where to go to find it, right?

It's just like, is this working?

Yeah, this is cool. So then the second thing you could do is you could search anyone's name. So I could be like, oh, what does Steph Smith do at The Hustle? I type Steph. It'll show me her profile, show me what she does, who she reports to, and that sort of thing. And then the last thing is that you as the kind of CEO or your kind of your, your admin at the company can post announcements or updates that will show up in their Chrome like new tab bar. So you can be like, oh, welcome these new employees or like happy birthday to this person or hey, remember this Friday we're all doing, you know, happy hour or whatever. And so it's a kind of a communication pipe also. So that I thought was cool. They're taking the Chrome extension to deliver critical internal company stuff, search for people, search for files, and internal announcements.

So this is interesting. And another one, I actually don't know how to say this company, but you wrote it in here. How do you pronounce that? Luster. Jack, our friend Jack was one of the early users and I think invested in it. And he says that it's awesome. But basically, they look at Wirecutter, Amazon, and dozens and dozens of other sources. And anytime you have a product in front of you, it tells you the average review. Kind of interesting. I don't know how—

I think it's a little better than that. I think what they do is you say your—

Yeah, my description was about a year ago.

You— I think what it does is you go on Amazon or whatever, and you search for flat-screen TV. And, you know, it's— there's so many products out there. And all of them, you know, Great, it's 4 stars. What do I make of that? Um, and so what Luster does is try to make the buying process simpler. So it'll basically say, here's the recommended option for what you searched for. Is the mo— this— our, our AI has searched all the reviews, all the different websites, has all this data to tell us that this is the most popular result for what you're looking for. And then here's the high-end version of it, and here's maybe the low-end version of it. Um, and so I don't know if the product's evolved too much since then, but that's what it kind of did at that time, was it would help you figure out which products should you actually buy using data. And again, you didn't have to remember to go to Luster. It was a Chrome extension. So you're just on any website shopping. You can go to Walmart, you go to Amazon, you go bestbuy.com, wherever you're searching. And Luster will be like, hey, here's the product we recommend and here's why. Here's what the reviews say about it summarized automatically for you, which I thought was pretty cool.

I think that that's a— this could be a good product. When he pitched it to me and when Jack told me about it, I was like, this is stupid. I'm not in. Uh, I understand though. I actually, I think I, I was wrong about it. It's really cool.

Um, so the founder Stuart's really smart and, and, um, for this one he showed me a chart, a graph that, that was doing pretty well. So here's some other ideas of things. So those are ideas that we've either invested in or seen. I have a couple more for you. So let's use your framework of take a popular app like Duolingo that shows that there's a need or a demand. People want to learn a language and you make it a Chrome extension as the user experience instead of a mobile app.

So at least one of the main widgets or main points of distribution, right?

So let's take meditation, right? You have Headspace, you have Calm. Why don't you have a Chrome extension, a Chrome plugin that will basically say it'll see, you know, you've been on, you've been browsing for 2 hours straight, you've had, you have 85 tabs open. Hey, let's take a minute. Would you like to earn some, earn some mindfulness points and take a 1-minute quick meditation?. And it just, you tap the thing, it turns on because there's a clock and there's like a guided voice that's doing a guided meditation for you. I think so. I think a Chrome, I think meditation delivered through a Chrome extension could work because it's so popular as a mobile app. But again, for mobile app, you have to remember to go do it. Whereas this could just kind of like, as you go, it could pause you and, and help you out.

That's great. I think that has, that has legs. I'll, I'll, I'll keep going with this game. Do you know the, you know how, do you on your iPhone, what's that thing called where it blocks you from using a website after a certain amount of time?

Oh yeah. Like time something. I don't know. I don't know. Do you use that? I never use that shit. No.

Do you? Yeah. I mean, I have it installed. Screen time.

I think this is what it's called.

Screen time. I used to have this Chrome plugin called Nukem. I think it was called Nukem or the option was called Nukem where after a certain amount of time you would nuke your website and you cannot go to certain websites. So you can only go to like Google Docs, email, and that was it. I loved it. So similar to meditation, I would 100% try to create more of a, of these. What do you call this? Change your— stop using stuff app, right?

Right, right. Yes. Defend yourself against yourself. Okay, I have a smart idea. And I have a gimmick idea.

Which one do you want?

Okay, smart one or the gimmick one?

Smart one first.

All right, smart one first. Okay, we had the founder of— you mentioned the founder of Superhuman. He's the guy who built Reportive before that. We both loved Reportive. It doesn't exist now, so some people might not know what it is. But what Reportive was doing was when you were emailing somebody, as soon as you typed in their name or their email, a little sidebar would pop out of your email that would just show you their face, show you their name, show you the last few tweets.

It was like at the time it was like magic. We were like, how on earth do they know all this?

It was— it just makes you a more thoughtful person because you can see the person, you can see what they're up to, you can click their LinkedIn, get a little more information. And it kind of did the, like, it served it up. It was like you had an amazing assistant, executive assistant who was like, you know, by the way, sir, you need to know this about this person. So I think you could take Reportive all around the web. So I think you could make it where anytime it sees a name on a webpage, it just highlights it yellow. And then if you just hover over that, it'll just tell you something about that person. So I think you could bring this idea of like, anytime you see a name, tell me a little bit more about that person. I could think you could turn that into a Chrome extension rather than something that was just for email.

How would you make money off of it?

Ads, boom, that's my easy answer. I don't know. All right. Okay, but here's my gimmick one, which definitely needs ads. So I think there should be a Chrome extension. Let me take that back. I don't think this should exist. I think this would be funny if somebody tried to do this. So if you ever remember Million Dollar Homepage, it was kind of this cool idea of like, Here's a website. There's a million pixels on the page. Buy a pixel and sponsor it. Okay, that's cool. I've always thought about similar ideas. How could you make a million bucks off something simple and goofy? And there's this concept in the Bitcoin world of, I think it's called a fountain or a tap. It's basically a website where you go to and then sometimes there's like, think about like a spout, like a fountain. And sometimes free Bitcoin comes out. And so a bunch of people like to go to these to, so some projects use these to say like, go collect your coin, my new coin, go there and get some. And you go to the website, you collect some of the new coin that you can get. And then other people have done this to be like, hey, sometimes something comes out, sometimes it doesn't. It's a game of chance.

It's like a— what do they call this? They call it a— there's this company that did this with candles. We talked about them. It was called like Diamond Candles, I think. And at the bottom of every single candle, we're talking candles like a wax candle that you burn in your bathtub or whatever, like, like cool candles. That's fucking the only way I know how to use fucking candles is when I'm sitting in the bath.

I like that you start dropping F-bombs to like get masculine real quick while talking about bathtub candles. You're like, I don't fuck with that.

Dude, I use my bath bombs or what are they called?

Yeah, bath bombs.

Chrome extension. Well, I hope someone tries this because I think it would be hilarious that they create a product out of your joke. So long story short, we'll move on to— we'll move on from Chrome plugins. But I think it's so cool. I think people are underestimating this space a ton, and I'm excited to see what comes out of there.

Yeah. And I could go on forever about it, but I think there's— it's WordPress. I think there's Google Sheets. I think there's Gmail. I mean, it's a lot of Google stuff, but I think there's way more than people think.

Right.

All right. What do you want to do?

Let's do— what's the update on social stuff? What is that?

Oh, I was saying, just like our videos, man, our videos are crushing it. We're the guys. Henry and Jordan, or Henry and Dylan, who are making these, we made an offer to them to make dozens and dozens a month.

Like, are they doing it? Because I love their videos.

I think they're gonna do it. So we're gonna do like, I asked them, I'm like, send me a quote to do 30 to 60 videos a month, right? So they'll do our stuff. I actually think that they can reduce the quality a little bit.

Like, they're too good.

Well, like, they take a long time. I think that I think they can reduce the quality on YouTube because I think people watch YouTube a bit more passively. I think, and they should continue with the high quality on Instagram and Twitter because it's only 2 minutes long.

So weird. So, so people need to subscribe to watch the videos because they're not just, it's not just a video of what we talk about. It basically takes this hour-long thing where we're just shooting the shit. It finds the most interesting 2 minutes. It edits us down so that we sound smart. And it animates over the top of it. So it's like actually fun to look at and it makes way more sense than just hearing us talk about it. So where do they go to actually watch the videos? Because we need them to subscribe to the video place.

So there's a few ways you can do it. The first is you follow either Sean or Sean and I on Twitter, and we share them a lot personally. The second is The Hustle's Twitter, which is just @thehustle. The third is The Hustle's Instagram, which is @thehustledaily. The fourth is our YouTube channel, which we actually have to figure out how to do this because we're using our old YouTube account called youtube.com/hustlecon. So just Google The Hustle My First Million on YouTube, you'll see it. But we have to figure out how to manage that because they're actually kind of getting popular now, you know, 5 or 10,000 views a video. Um, and if we do 3 a week, which we're going to start doing, that's kind of— that gets to be somewhat interesting, right? So we got to figure that out. But those are the ways that they could find it right now.

Yeah, I like the— I go through the YouTube one. I like YouTube myself. And so, uh, But they're getting a ton of comments. Yeah, the comments are great. And I love responding to the comments. I'm just— right now, it's early days, right? I'm responding to all the comments because it's fun.

And they make fun of me a lot. I get made fun of way more than you.

Soon there'll be too many comments to respond to. But for now, I think there's like 17,000 subscribers. So I want to like triple that just off of the listeners for this podcast. So go to youtube.com/hustlecon, like hustle con, and then subscribe to that thing so that you get the videos from us.

And then we're gonna— there'll be a video, a video will have only 5,000 views, but like 100 and some odd comments, which is kind of crazy. And then the Instagram is getting stupid amount of engagements. And I think Sean, you're actually crushing me in terms of clips with hits. So a handful of your clips have gotten close to 100,000 views. We had one with Zach Crockett, one of our writers, and he got 70,000, I think, the other day. Nice. And so we're just gonna start churning them out and we're gonna soon do way more of these. Love it. Um, I think we're gonna launch a few more podcasts. It's TBD, but there's one called like How X Makes Money. So like Steph wants to break down how, um, something makes money. And then a similar podcast is The Economics of Blank. Uh, well, we'll talk about the economics of something else. Um, what else are we gonna do? I forget a few, but anyway, we gotta like, we're gonna just churn out these clips.

Yeah, it's way better to listen to, honestly. Like, when I listen to those, I'm— if I listen to the podcast, I kind of cringe myself because I'm like, I hate hearing my voice. And also, you know, we wander. It's an off-the-cuff, unedited conversation. But the clips, they're great. They're just great. All right. Anyways, what else?

Let me wrap this up. One thing, and I just want to say this now because I think I want to like look back and remember this. I think that in one year from now, and maybe 2 years from now, these style of clips that we're doing on social are definitely— they're kind of their own genre. Would you agree? Like, it's not like we're changing the world here, so I don't want to like over—

no, we're going to get copied if that's what you're getting at, because already every time we— every time I retweet one of them, other successful podcasters or like YouTubers are like, holy shit, who's making your clips? And I'm just like, dude, you know, I don't know their name. I forgot. I swallowed that key and that box is locked because I think they're great. I think they're better than everyone else's. And I don't want everybody copying us and having the same shit. But it's what is going to happen.

It is going to be the beginning of a new genre. Do you agree? Like, no one makes high-quality shit for a Twitter video.

Yeah. And it's, it's like easy. It's easy pickings, basically, for us now.

All right. We'll do one more segment.

Yeah, let's do it.

We'll do that.

I got two quick ones. So first, Gumroad just raised $5 million through a crowdfunding campaign. Wanted to get your take real quick. We can go quick. I don't know how much we have to talk about this, but good investment, bad investment. And then secondly, yeah, secondly, I want to know because you raised crowdfunding also. So I want to hear your thoughts on that, but I'll give the 2 seconds on Gumroad. So if you've never used it, Gumroad is awesome as a product. It's the easiest way as a creator. Like if I make an ebook or if I make a PDF that I want to sell that has a bunch of information on it. I'll go to Gumroad, I'll, in 10 minutes, I'll have a website up that can, that I can sell my digital product and I can take payments from it. So it does two things, right? It lets you sell a digital product. So like Shopify is not great for this. Shopify is more for like physical products. And it's just simple. It's like, I'm just selling one thing. I don't need a complicated store. I don't want to like have to like write code. And also like, I just want somebody to be able to come and pay with a credit card. And the other cool feature they have is you can make it like kind of like pay what you want. So it's sort of like a tip jar essentially for something you make. And so some people have made, you know, a lot of money doing this. I think some people at The Hustle— I know Steph did a book on, I think, Gumroad that did like $30,000 in sales, maybe $50,000 or something like that.

It did $70,000. I've made tens of thousands of dollars on Gumroad.

What was your product you sold on Gumroad?

How to— so before The Hustle, I owned a roommate matching business and I mastered Craigslist. And in cities like San Francisco and New York, um, a person on Craigslist will get hundreds of replies to their apartment. And so I just taught people how to email people in order to get an apartment on Craigslist. And it was so successful that on the first date with my now wife, I asked her how she got an apartment. She's like, oh, I just used some guide online. And she bought my guide. I mean, I sold a lot of them. So that was my product.

That's hilarious. I didn't know that. Yeah, so Gumroad is called—

by the way, I'll plug it— Gumroad, the miracle Craigslist template.

There you go. Okay, so, so it's for that kind of thing. It enables a different kind of seller. Been around for like, I literally think 10 years now. They went through this crazy story where they came out, got hot, raised a bunch of money from like big name VCs. Then things didn't go so well. Had to basically unwind the whole thing. So like laid off or let go or employees left or whatever, went back to like kind of like a 1 to 3 person operation, I think. They went to like kind of bootstrapping it and went back to kind of like focusing on profitability and because they realized they couldn't raise any more money. And then now they're back 10 years later. So that was like, you know, a 10-year arc. And now they're like kind of restarting it again, like we're going big again. And, and they have some pretty interesting metrics. You pull up their Go to their fundraising thing.

The metrics are, are— it doesn't make that much money, but it has a— so basically the way Gumroad works is people post stuff for sale. And so in terms of gross transactions, I don't think they report that as revenue.

$200 and something million, $220-ish million in GMV, which is a month or a year. Yeah, per year.

Yeah. So pretty high GMV. It's growing like crazy. It's a really good product. I love it. But the actual— not the net income, but like the net revenue, it's not significant. It was like $200,000 a month.

It was like— I think I just read it. So, so I'll pull these up. But Aubrey, you go get the Republic, their fundraising page. It has all the stats on it. But basically, if I remember correctly, it's like $8 to $9 million of net income last year that they got to keep.. And then from that they had $1 million profit at the end of the year.

I don't think that it's that high, but that would be cool if it were.

But the business basically exploded during the kind of like COVID bump. And so you could check, check out this fundraising page real quick.

We'll just, we'll just— yeah, go ahead, read off the stats and then I'll tell you my opinion. Well, I'll just tell you my opinion now while you're looking that up, which is I would not invest in this at all. I would run away from this. Okay.

So I'll give you the numbers.

I'm going to explain why in a second.

And it was only $1 million because they only had one employee. So of that two— so they really had $2.6 million in revenue. And the only thing they had to support was 1 or 2 employees and $9 million in revenue.

$9 million was their take off the total transaction. And they have more than 1 employee now, I think, because he kind of like rebooted the company to grow again. And so $9 million is what the company made. So, but they're raising, I think, at like a $100 million valuation or something like that.

But I would not, I would not invest in this at all. We've really butchered the numbers here.

Sorry. Yeah, we should have prepped this one.

I would not invest in this at all, and I'll tell you why. I was a fan of Gumroad since 2012. My friend Nathan Barry told me about it because he had a book there and he went and spoke at the Gumroad office. And I went to their office and watched him speak and I was like, damn, this is great. What is this whole Gumroad thing? This is awesome. Yada, yada, yada. I started— I began as a Gumroad user in 2011, but the founder was like a prodigy. His name's Sahil, I think. His name seems like a cool dude. Real smart. He left Pinterest as the third employee to start this. He was like a prodigy, started the company at 19, but he failed, um, which is great. That's fine. You know, you take swings, it doesn't always work out. And he raised $16 million. He got the investors to write it off saying like, all right, we'll give you back all the equity. This is dead for us. And then he went and worked on it and he kept working on it, which is cool. But now none of the investors or the employees who previously worked there, all their equity got completely canceled out because somehow in good faith, they said, we're out of here, fine, you could have it. And it's actually going to turn out to be something. And I wouldn't want to invest in this person for two reasons. The first, I don't think that he cares about investors. I think that he just cares about creating cool stuff and making his lifestyle great, which is no, no problem. I'm like that a little bit as well. But I wouldn't want to invest money at $100 million valuation, someone with that attitude. Two, if he takes money and doesn't give money back to the people who gave equity to and tries to build this thing to sell, I think that that's unethical. And I don't want to be part of that. So that's why I would pass on this.

Interesting. Yeah, I've heard somebody else talking about that as well. I don't know the whole situation. So I can't say, you know, exactly how those conversations went down and what everybody was on board with and whatnot.

By the way, I don't know the whole situation either. A lot of what I've just said is is, is—

that's the public.

I've heard rumors, and a lot of it is hypothetical, but this is what I think is— I mean, if you, if you just read publicly what's going on, you can kind of—

it's right. That's in line with what I've heard. So none of that's out of line. I don't think that he did it to screw anybody at all. I don't think so. I think literally the expectations of the company were too high. It wasn't going to continue growing at that pace.

It wasn't— I don't think he tried to screw anyone either.

So he was like, either we shut this down, we set fire sale this, or we kind of unwind it and get it back to a bootstrappable company. But if we're going to do that, then this whole venture structure and all these employees don't make any sense anymore.

I'm great with that. Right. I'm great with that until—

You raised— Yeah, I can talk about that.

You raised from real investors and you could have raised all the money from real investors. You raised most of it. You just opened up a small amount so your community would feel like bought into the product. I think that's a different thing than—

it is a different thing. But I still regret— I actually regret doing that and I wish I didn't do it and I wish I didn't do it because when you do that, you now have a whole lot of people who are going to ask you questions and things like that. And it's quite distracting.

And also, did they get paid out, by the way, from this deal, the HubSpot deal? They all got a check. So they all know what the thing sold for then, right? How are you, how are you planning to keep it a secret if they are all going to get some multiple of their money?

Because the multiple that they get was because the total consideration was like the retention of employees and all that stuff.

They don't get that.

Yeah. Like I personally am going to make a ton, like maybe more money just off the retention package than the cap table package.

Right.

So there's things like that. And also, it depends. I'm not saying for my deal, but for some deals, it depends how the note's structured. Yep. But it's, it's not fun, I think, because you have to report to people on a quarterly basis about certain stuff. And so it's basically like you're a publicly traded company.

Yeah, may not be worth the hassle.

I don't think it's worth the hassle. And I do agree that a lot of them are bottom of the barrel. Not all, but a lot, right?

Yeah.

That said, if you're okay with the not having privacy, which some people are cool with that, I do actually think it's wise to get some users to invest in you. You know, this is actually how, um, Samuel Adams Beer Company got started. They let their customers buy shares in the company before it went public. And then, and, and in their case, they said it helped them a ton.

I, I agree. I like when you raise from customers. I don't— and I think that's a totally different thing than just going on a crowdfunding platform and saying, hey, person who wants to invest in tech, but you don't have the network and you don't have the know-how and you're not in any of the funds, um, like you should just invest in my thing. You're not a customer of it. Whereas like, let's say you're Samuel Adams or next week, next episode, I'm going to talk about Ben Jerry's. Ben Jerry's did the same thing. They did it. They did a share offering to their local, uh, customers in Vermont so that they would be more likely to shop at their store, continue to come back to the store because they feel like a part owner. What you guys did with The Hustle, you let the readers invest. Um, I think that's very different than what you see on most of the crowdfunding sites, which is basically what— when you show up on a crowdfunding site, it's typically, I struck out with real investors, so this is my last shot, you know. And that's why I say bottom of the barrel. That's not nice. And, you know, I'm sure that's not the case for all the companies. I have friends that have done this, and the friends I have that have done this, that's exactly what happened. They struck out with the sophisticated investors, so they go to the unsophisticated investors and try to patch together $3,000 checks, $5,000 checks, or whatever to get—

and it doesn't mean that they're not going to be successful. It just means they weren't— they couldn't get it done.

Great. Well, you want to do one more topic or—

Yeah, let's do one more. Uh, the other one is this idea or something cool that Ben showed me called StudyStream Live. Have you heard of this?

No, I'm gonna Google it.

Somebody tried doing this for working, but it's basically like, hey, everybody's working from home remotely. It could be kind of lonely. And I forgot what the name of the work-related one was, but it was basically—

I had one. It was called Peek. And it was horrible, dude. There was like times where like we had this one plugin where it would take a picture every 30 seconds or every 2 minutes or something. So you could like see your coworkers and do shit. But like there'd be times like, like, look, this is— this sounds like bro-y and embarrassing, but there's definitely times where you're shirtless, where you're on the toilet using your computer, where you're like walking around in your underwear. And there was times it caught me like like shirtless in a peak. And I was like, oh my God, this is right. Like you're laying in bed, like playing on the computer or like, that's a bit of a different thing.

All right. So that, I know what you're talking about there. That's like a, kind of like spontaneous, like it's kind of like a passive way of sharing what you're, what you're doing. This is different. There's, this is, you want to focus. Do you want kind of like a study buddy? And so you say, all right, for the next hour, match me with someone else. I think Focusmate is the name of the one I was thinking about, which is, It matches you with one person and you get to work together. You're both going to work on something. At the beginning, you're like, oh yeah, I'm working on my email newsletter today. And the other person's like, yeah, I have this report I need to give to my boss.

Okay, I'm on this right now. I'm on their website. I already know what's going to happen with this company.

So, so let me explain what it is first. So, so you get paired for the hour. You're supposed to focus and get something done. So it's supposed to increase your productivity because you kind of have like a buddy who's holding you accountable from just drifting off and doing nothing. And you also can meet people and it's like kind of like a speed dating thing where you're going to end up bumping into people and you're not just alone all day in silence in your house. So that's the idea. Focusmate was trying to do it for work. This study, the study thing, what was it called? Study what live?

It's StudyStream.live.

How did Ben find this?

He said, oh, this thing's going viral on TikTok. And so that might be like a temporary thing where they're full right now because they're going viral on TikTok. But, you know, TikTok is kind of a younger generation and they're basically— it speaks to them, which is like, hey, you know, you're at home, it's kind of lonely, kind of boring, and you don't meet anybody, you don't get to see your friends, you don't get to meet any new people, and you want to focus, but it's hard to focus.

I wouldn't say it's going viral. Their most viewed video has 35,000 views, but they do have traction for sure. Like every video has 7,000 views.

So yeah, I think, I think it's other people. It's not their own videos. I think it's other people talking about it that went viral. That's how people discovered it.

Somebody was saying, I'm on the website right now. I go to their website, it says Boost Your Focus, join a 24/7 virtual room. I click a room to join, uh, I click Focus Room and I click a room to join. It just takes you to a Google, uh, a Zoom room, right?

Like, I just don't do it, it's gonna mess up the podcast, but don't join it.

Well, I just clicked it to— and it like prompts you for a Zoom room. Now, am I weird or dirty in thinking— I think this is just gonna become like this and this is chat roulette. I mean, I think that the younger people, the people who use this, uh, are like better internet people than our generation. So I don't think— I don't— I actually, like, our generation I think would default to thinking it would be dicks. I think that this— these folks would not default to that. But is— this looks like a really innocent and lovely internet community. Is it going to be ruined with that?

That's probably— wherever there can be dicks, there will be dicks, right? So I think— I think that definitely there's going to be some people doing it. They're going to have to figure out a way to stamp that out. One thing might be, you know, the big thing here is, can they, can they pull off a subscription? So can they get you to pay to have this, this, you know, study buddy kind of setup where you get to focus and you get to meet some new people? Will people pay? I am skeptical of it, but I found it interesting. This is new. I don't know how to feel about it. And so I think rather than judge, I'm just, I'm just kind of like, I'm going to watch this one and see what happens.

So a whole bunch of media dorks that I'm friends with, they're all like, oh, media is like the future of education, commerce, and community. Like they use these stupid-ass buzzwords and they say all this bullshit. No. Or they say like, uh, we're gonna create like a 3D thing so you can— it's like, no, no, no, no. You guys are thinking about this whole— like, first of all, colleges are always gonna exist and we're always gonna need them, whatever, yada yada. But this company that I'm seeing, uh, StudyStream, this is a crazy unique Gen Z— like, the people who I've talked about who say this are typically in their 30s and 40s. Um, This looks like it was created by an 18-year-old who's in the know and it's totally unique. It's so interesting. I don't care if this fails. I think it's a really good, uh, swing. Very unique. Very, very unique.

Very great. I think this was like a student project. I don't think this is meant to be like a company necessarily. Like there's a kind of like an about page on there. You could probably check it out, but it sort of said like this was made by the student group of whatever, like some place.. And it just seems kind of like a humble side project that is getting a little bit of momentum. And it kind of tells you like, there's something interesting there. It's not easy to get that level of traction. I don't know if it'll stay, it's probably not gonna be the biggest thing in the world. But I thought there was a pretty neat idea.

I think that this is an incredibly successful project. Who created this? I'm looking for it. There is a guy named Paul Scott. Did he create this? I just like am Googling the URL. You can't find anything about it. People on Reddit are talking about it. This is crazy. That's— yeah, this is super interesting. It's very— it's still very underground.

Yeah. Here it is. I thought this was cool. That's all I kind of have for today. I have— I have two good ones for next— the next pod. So I'm excited about that.

I found it. It had— this thing has funding.

It's like a company company.

So I googled StudyStream.live and I went to a guy's LinkedIn page and he's the co-founder of a VC firm. It's called Knowledge Collective, is a venture builder focused on global impact by disrupting health, education, and sustainability. And he has StudyStream.live as one of their portfolio companies along with StudyPal.live. Youngleaders.digital and kc.institute.

I think that's all, that's all for this episode. Let's wrap it. Um, Abreu, what'd you think of this one?

Oh, by the way, uh, everyone said that the, um, recap at the Michael thing was the best thing, so I guess we should do those more.

Yeah, I thought that was good. I hope people stuck around to the end because we didn't, uh, I think we probably should have put a line in at the beginning that was like, hey, This is an interview with Michael Saylor. He's an awesome guy for this reason. And, uh, you know, the interview was a little bit weird. We actually debrief it at the end of the show. Um, if you want to skip to the last 10 minutes or you want to listen to it, that's in the last 10 minutes, but blah, blah, blah. I feel like there's probably a lot of people who got 5 minutes in or 10 minutes in and were just like, what's going on here? Uh, yeah, I'm going to listen to something else. I'm going to go do something else. But the people who did make it to the end gave us a lot of good feedback on it. But by the way, some of the feedback that we got was like, Why did you guys try to bro out with him at the beginning about cars and shit? Like, he didn't want that.

Like, dude, we actually— what's so funny is we like plan that. We're like, what should we like do icebreakers? And we're like, we said like 8 ideas. And I was like, I can just ask them about cars, right? And we're like, that's the best of the worst. Just ask them about cars.

we should have, 100%. And I think what a lot of people don't realize, and what I didn't realize until I got into this game, was we're like, try to be like friends with these people, or at least cordial, friendly. And it's really awkward to, to be like, this is weird, isn't it? Like, it's like, imagine just like having a conversation with a stranger at a party that you met. I mean, that's kind of what we're doing. Yes. And it's really uncomfortable. It's really uncomfortable to do that. But we should have done that. And that's what we should do more of.

And even now, while I'm rambling, I'm not saying the right thing. Like, it's not coming out right. But what I do know is that was the move. That was the move. And there's no— there's no— that was the lesson. That was the— that was the big gain of that. Like, I thought the episode was going to be amazing. Frankly, I don't think the episode was amazing, but an amazing thing came out. I really liked it. I know, but for me, it wasn't something I'm proud of. But the thing I— the amazing thing that did come out of it was we got into an uncomfortable situation and we got a rep trying something that was hard to do. We kind of failed at the rep, but because of that situation, I now know next time what I will do if I'm ever in that situation again. And so like, that was the, that was the goal that came out of that for me. I wanted to share that.

Yeah. And I actually want to interview more crazy, interesting, off-the-wall people. I think we just need a few more reps to get to, to get in there. Most people we've interviewed have been pretty easy. I mean, Tai Lopez was hard. And we, I think we actually kicked that one in the ass.

Yeah. I thought we did good on that one. That one was also challenging. And I was thinking, um, I actually think you're really good at naturally doing the thing, which is naturally warming the guest up because I think you're very informal. You're very casual. So that just like, they're like, oh, that's the tone of this thing. Uh, he's not trying to like give this polished intro. You'll just be like, you're like an interesting guy, right? Like you're cool. And then they're like, what? Yeah. Then you're like, you know, you're like a cool guy and you're clearly smart and like, you know, and then you do this thing. And like, I remember with the guest who came on for Deep Sentinel, you were like talking about how you wanted to like convert your truck into an overlander. And then he like had that in common and it actually worked out amazing to just talk about like some, you know, something that was not just, hey, tell me about your company and why it's so great. Because he knows that pitch will go into, it'll go into autopilot. And you got him talking about something that was not autopilot. And with like others, like, uh, the David's Teas guys or whatever, you were like, um, I think you called him like a handsome dude or something. And like, you know, he's like, it like gets them into— it gets them laughing, it gets them out of there.

I call them really good-looking.

Yeah, you're really good-looking. Um, he doesn't expect that. And so I think you do a good job of it, but sometimes obviously it's a swing.

It didn't work, dude. Michael out-alphaed me, out-alphaed me so hard. I was like, yeah, I got this card so fast. He's like, yeah, I like the jet. He's like, I prefer jets and yachts. I was like, all right, right, all right, Daddy, you got me. Um, Abreu, what do you think about today and last week?

Actually, one of the comments on that video was, is I've seen dozens of these videos and nobody's ever asked them about that ship. So there you go, Sam was the first to ask about the ship. Um, I think we should have them back on. I think second time around might be better.

Yeah. And I think, Sean, one thing that I don't think I'm handling well, and tell me if you're struggling with it, is with these videos getting out, we're getting way more comments and becoming a little bit more public figures. It definitely falls like I'm a— I think I'm a pretty tough guy, like in terms of like, I don't let a lot bother me. It bothers me sometimes. Does it bother you?

It's definitely the case that that one negative thing, I hear it 20 times forever. You know, it's like one negative is worth 20 positive comments. It doesn't have to be negative, just like, because often it's like something totally true and, or it's just something, you know, ridiculous. But, uh, a negative thing does like sit in your brain a little bit more. And I think that there's probably some like getting used to of that where eventually that'll just wear off, right? Like, like in any public speaking or any kind of like anytime you put yourself out there, like you do develop thicker and thicker skin as you go. For us, we weren't like— I wasn't podcasting, I don't know, like over a year ago, right? I didn't, I didn't make content. I didn't put my face on video. I didn't put my name behind ideas that are good, or I didn't try to like go, you know, interview a billionaire and do all this stuff. I wasn't really trying to do that. And so it's definitely getting, definitely getting thicker skin. I would say like, on the whole, I don't feel like I'm too sensitive about it because like, I spend very little time thinking about it. But if I, if I'm honest, yeah, a negative comment definitely does, you know, reverberate in my ears 10 times more than a positive compliment, which I just kind of brush off immediately.

And I don't care about positive compliments. They like, they might as well not exist. I don't even see them. But and it's not to the point where it ruins my day, but it like gives me, it's like a shitty half hour. Right. It's like a shitty half hour.

I also think I'm worse than anybody, right? Like when I did the CNBC thing today, I watched the video in the first 10 seconds. I'm like, why the fuck do I blink so much? Like, what am I doing? Do I always blink?

If it makes you feel better, I think you looked cool. I think you looked cool. I, the, the way that you look now is like 100 times cooler than the way you looked a year and a half ago.

Yeah. My hair out, it passed the awful zone of growing it out.

And now it's like, okay, no, and you like, you used to have a little baby face. You just look better. I just think you look like a cool person.

Oh, thank you.

Appreciate that. The facial, the facial hair. I think you look like a cool guy.

I take it back. I like compliments. All right, there we go. I'm back. I'm back in the game.

Right, Abreu? Am I wrong? He looks way cooler now.

The thing that you probably don't like is when they compare, when like one of them likes, if like if they love you and they hate me, or they love me and they hate you, those are the ones that suck. 'Cause it's one thing just to be a hater, but if it's like, no, I like that guy. I just don't like this other dude. It's like, it's like more personal than just being like, you guys are idiots. It's like, yeah, whatever.

I, what's interesting though is I don't think there's a favorite so far. I think that, um, you, I think they hated you more and, um, they liked me more and I think it's slowly shifted a little bit. So now I actually think we're equal.

Um, we'll see.

I actually think, I think we're equal in terms of, uh, the dislike and the likes.

What do you think, Abreu?

I think this part was almost better than the podcast, the last 10-15 minutes.

I don't know if that's an insult or a compliment.

No, the podcast was good, but this part made me, this part made me smile and laugh. And when the podcast can do that as well, that's great. But this podcast did it. Although it was informative. Um, yeah, I think you guys should take the good with the bad, right? Like, being out there, Sean, you've been able to create this big newsletter, you raise the fund, you got all this positive stuff. So like a few bad comments, like, I don't know, you— the positives outweigh the bad, I guess. It's like, I think that's the way of looking at it.

Do you have a big newsletter now?

Uh, that's like the same. It's like, actually, the, the thread that went viral just now, the Clubhouse thing, that added a few thousand people to it, but let me see what it's at. I think it's like a 22,000, 23,000 subscribers now.

I will say it makes— I feel so validated in my sense of self-worth that I was doing newsletters 5 years ago and now all the cool kids like Sean and Greg and all— every cool kid.

And I literally thought it was stupid what you were doing. I was like, what is he doing?

Finally, finally, all of the cool kids Get it. It took, it took them forever, but I do feel validated. Yeah.

You did it right. You got it big and you cashed it out. And I think that's the, you know, that's the, um, you went full, you're lapping us at this point. Like you already did the whole thing and all of us right now are still like, oh, we got to make interesting content. Then we got to capture that person. We'll get that. Let's get their email address. That'll work. Like that's a good idea. And then like, let's, let's hit them up regularly with something. And then, then let's figure out how to make money. It's like, you've already done like 8 of those steps.

We're all just like, no, I think, I think there's, there's room to build significantly bigger things in significantly shorter times, but I 100% feel validated. I mean, I get, I'm, I'm wrong all the time. This is just the one time that I've been right and it makes me feel validated. My sense of self-worth has just boosted.

By the way, I tried this thing. Okay. So check out this thing behind me. This Vestaboard. Have you seen this before?

No. Is that a Bitcoin ticker?

No, no, no, no. I don't know if you could see, um, I don't know if you could see it because my camera like doesn't autofocus on it. I tried to have this behind me. So on the thing behind me right now. So for those who are listening, you can't see this. I basically have this giant like board and the board is like if you go to a train station and you see where it's like, you know, like those little like flipboard signs where it's like, you know, this train is at station 6 and it's like, and it switches. It's like train departs at station 8 now. It's like So it's one of those, it does the thing. And so you can put any message on here. So you can program it where like, I could put like, you know, today's revenue and it'll like keep updating every hour on there. I could put a message, I could put like a quote that I like on there. So it's like an art piece of art that kind of changes behind me. But I tried to get this up for the CNBC thing. Uh, cause I was going on, I bought the domain, thatdudeontv.com.

Cause I was like, oh my gosh, that is awesome. Great idea.

I was like, what if I can get a chance to shout something else? Like, oh dude, I'm trying to do my name. No one's going to see it. Spell that. No one's gonna remember Sean Puri. Sean with two freaking A's. Like, that's not gonna work.

Great idea.

So I got, I got thatdudeontv.com. If you go to it, it just redirects you to my website. And then I just had it behind me, uh, during the interview so that anybody who saw it could like go to it. But the, but the guys on CNBC were like, hey, we need you to move over to the middle. I was like, oh shit, it's gonna block my sign. But he's like, no, you need to be centered. I was like, oh, okay. Whatever. But that was my little attempt to get any traffic. I don't know, I haven't had a chance. This morning's been so busy, dude. We did the— I did the CNBC thing. And then I had to take care of my daughter. And then, and then we had this crazy, like, situation with my wife's e-commerce store where there's, like, you know, like, crazy theft going on in the warehouse. We're, like, trying to deal with that and trying to feel like, okay, how do we deal with that? So, you know, there's crazy stuff going on. But I'm just trying to get back to my, like, paternity dad life and just chill with the baby. That's, that's what I want to do. I'm basically just gonna chill with the baby for the next few weeks and just try to record this podcast, you know, for, you know, 1 hour, 1 hour a week or whatever, 2 hours a week that we do this.

Well, Abreu, A, B, C, D?

A. Ah, all right. We can never leave without Abreu. You're like, kind of like, you tell us the bedtime story. We can't get off the air until you give us the validation.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.