#19 - Drone Light Shows, No Code Movement & Plugin Empires
Million Dollar Brainstorm. We're back. Episode 3. It's been fun so far. Like, we had a guy, the guy who texted us about the TRT thing. Yeah, we got to call that guy.
Yes. We talked about the TRT businesses. He has owned apparently a few, sold it for what he said was 7 figures, is interested in expanding. I'm not going to start that, but somehow he got both of our numbers.
I don't know how.
I thought he was a friend of yours when he texted.
I thought he was a friend of yours.
So he somehow got both of our numbers and was like, hey guys, you're talking about this TRT thing. Trust me, I know way more about this than you do. I started a TRT business, brick and mortar, sold it for 7 figures. I can help you guys do this thing you guys are doing. I'm gonna do it and you guys can sort of be involved in some way. And I was like, wow, that's cool. Like, this is luck coming to us.
Yeah, love that. You're right. Well, let's create more luck. And where we left off last week, I had brought up the idea of Zapier. Are you familiar with that?
I am familiar with it, but if you need to give the basics.
Wade, the guy, his name's Wade. He's a young guy. I don't know him, but I've chatted with him on Twitter. So the story is, is that he was, went to college at University of Missouri. They raised $1 million in funding from YC or something like that. And they're fully distributed. I've got a friend who works there. So no office. And what they've done is they've built a really easy system to allows you to connect to programs via API. So. For us, we run our whole business off of this. So like if there's a new entry form onto Google Sheets, it will tell Slack you have a new entry form. And you could do that with probably 1,000 different apps that they have already uploaded.
It's like plumbing or piping between all your different programs.
Yeah. I think that this is the very early stages of that. And this whole idea of connecting different apps through a way that does not involve coding. It's this whole thing right now that I've heard people refer as the no-code movement. Have you heard of no-code?
I've heard of this. A lot lately. I think this is, this is trending.
Yes. And it is going to get much bigger. So first of all, Zapier, they've built this company now. I've heard they're speaking at HustleCon, so we'll learn, but I've heard that it's a $50 or $60 million recurring business. They've only raised $1 million in funding. So like on the really high end, this company could be worth half a billion dollars. On the lower end, maybe like a few hundred million dollars. So very valuable. And so why, why is this growing so fast? And it's, I think it's because this whole no-code thing. And I'm incredibly fascinated by companies in that space. So another one's Webflow. Mm-hmm. Uh, Webflow has been around for 6 years. They actually started right before I started HustleCon. I, I talked to Bryant right before he launched it. I thought it was not gonna be, be a big thing. It is going to be a big thing. And then there's a handful of other things. Have you seen any other no-code ones?
Yeah, there's a couple good ones. So Webflow and Zapier are the two sort of most successful ones now. I have one on my phone. People are trying to do this where can you make a mobile app without coding, right?
Yeah.
And I don't think this is not going to be a fad. Mm-hmm. I believe this is going to be a thing. Yeah. So much so that a friend friend of mine, his name's Andrew Wilkinson. He owns this agency called Meta Lab, which is, I think they're like 200-person agency. They create user interfaces like Slack, or they created that for Slack. He is opening up an agency only around no-code. So the goal is how do we hire just like designers and marketers and have them actually build this stuff?
No-code experts.
No-code experts. Right. That's amazing. So if I was trying to make money right now, I would, I would create an entire community around this.
So I had a guy reach out after the last one said, hey, I heard you guys mention no-code. By the way, I've created the largest directory of no-code tools and reviews. And here, check this out. I think it's called Codeless. And he sent me an invite and was like, you know, let me know what you think.
Is it awesome?
It wasn't super awesome yet, but I was like, look, here's 3 things I would do with this if I was you, right? Like, I don't think you need a directory of everything. I think you need to be able to say, here, you're trying to do X. Here's the best no-code tool. And here's a course on how to use that no-code tool. And just be like curating the best no-code tools. And then training people on how to use them.
Kind of like what you're saying. So I want to use that as a segue into something similar, but let's—
Wait, I have one no-code tool we should know.
I want to hear what you have to say.
Retool is the name of the no-code tool. Have you heard of this?
No.
Alright, Retool. I think, you know, I saw the founder of Stripe tweet about this. He's like, this is awesome. And I saw it and I was like, this is actually amazing. So what these guys did was every company has like internal dashboards. So you create some—
So everybody creates them and it's not just about data, but like you create some like admin interface. It's like, oh, I need to be able to, you know, for you guys, you might need to be able to go go in and change something in the email for tomorrow, or go in and give the advertiser some permission or something like that. So most software companies have some admin panels, admin dashboards that you need to do. Dashboard, not for data, but for doing things like running your business. And so what Retool did was they were like, look, developers, like smart developers hate building these things. And typically people do a poor job of building them cuz there's like, oh, this is internal anyways.
It's just like task work.
It's just task work. You kind of need it to run your business. And the UX always sucks cuz the designers never touch it cuz it's not facing customers.
And it, it'll break and you're like, oh, I'm working on this huge project. I know, but come on, I need this.
And everyone's admin tool, it's like, oh, there's all this like internal knowledge. It's like jerry-rigged, right? It's like, oh, you need to click that button twice for it to work. It's like, what? How would I know that? It's like, yeah, yeah, it's broken. We haven't gotten around to fixing it. So what Retool did was they made internal admin dashboards as a service for any company. And they are taking off. And so Retool, we used them. Yeah. We use them with our esports platform because sometimes we needed to go in and manually update the scores of the tournaments if our scoring system was wrong. And we needed to be able to go look up if someone was cheating or not. And so we use them for our dashboard. So for you still need to be a developer, but it makes the developer's job like way easier. And you also don't need to be like a deep, full-stack developer. You could be like, you know, very, very sort of a light engineer and use Retool and set it up for your company.
So are these guys, How big is the company?
So they went through Y Combinator recently. I don't know how big they are in terms of revenue or people, but I do know that, you know, for the first 6 months, 8 months, they were kind of floundering. It wasn't really working. And then all of a sudden it started taking off. This past year has just been like they're in that mode where you're just trying to keep up with growth.
And it's like 30 people, 10 people.
I haven't, I haven't met them. I don't know how many people are in the company. Probably something like 15 to 20.
So let me tell you what I would do right now. This, I am all in on this. I think this is going to be huge. The first thing that I would do, which would be hard but worth it, is you start one of these companies, like all around no-code. That, that is not gonna happen overnight. You're gonna have to get a team together, maybe raise money. You're gonna have to get people together to build this. 100%. I would pick a niche and go after this. But the second thing, which is, oh, and by the way, those things can be huge. So, you know, Tableau. Yep.
I mean, these are multi-hundred million dollar a year companies, publicly traded, some of 'em at billions of dollars of valuation. The sky's the limit for anyone in this space. The second thing that I would do, and this is more labor intensive. But you could crush it right off the bat is I would create a business that goes into companies like The Hustle or Twitch and charges $10,000 to $30,000 for a 2 or 3-day seminar and says on the promise of this, hey, head of growth marketing or marketing, or hey, head of this department, I'm gonna make it so your team can move 2 times faster by teaching them just how to make their own stuff. You're not gonna need any dev time. Right. Would that interest you? Of course. Of course. Let me come in and teach your team how to use this suite of tools and they'll never have to ask a dev for help again. That I would do that. I would pay my company, which is a small company, I would pay someone $3,000 to $5,000 to come and do that.
Right. So trend here is the no-code movement, the availability of all these no-code tools. What you're saying is couple companies to keep an eye on Webflow, Zapier, Retool, and then now you're saying new opportunity. You can actually like serve that industry either through Workshops through building a no-code company, connecting a bunch of different tools, building a directory, whatever it may be.
Do you have budget where you're at now to make that call?
Like to hire people to come in and train?
Yeah.
Like, yeah, yeah. We have like a training budget.
$2,000?
I wouldn't, cuz I, my team is all engineers, but what I would do, I, I also work with this other group called Partnerships where they literally would beg for engineering time and can never get it in the company. And so if I told them, hey, look, here's 3 tools out here that could make job a lot easier. And these guys are going to come in and do this. Yeah, I would pay for that.
There it is.
All right, I got a different idea. Drone light shows.
Oh my God, those are awesome.
Have you seen this? They're awesome.
Okay, so totally awesome.
If you're sitting in front of a computer, Google this right now. Drone light show. Think fireworks but modernized.
How big do you think the firework industry is?
I've not done the research.
Definitely seasonal.
Who's the person in the back here doing trends research? Look up fireworks and look up drone light show. So basically what these guys do is they get a fleet of drones, like, I don't know, 50 drones, small little cheap drones, and they put lights on them. Yeah, like tiny little drones. They put lights on them. They use software to synchronize the pattern so they can go and they can dance and they can go into different shapes. It can be a flower and then a rainbow and then whatever. And they do this at, you know, music festivals, birthday parties, conventions, whatever. It's, it is the new fireworks and it looks so cool. And the product sells itself because if you see it at one event, you will like someone in that thousand person will want to use it at their own event. And so I think that drone light shows are going to be really big.
So your wife does things at conferences where she draws. Correct. And she draws what the conference speaker is speaking about.
Exactly. You might have seen that someone's talking and live in real time on a giant whiteboard that's as big as a wall, she's drawing like an infographic story of what the person's saying live. And this is like a magic trick.
And she makes a wonderful living doing this.
They want to have that. Yeah. And do this for the drone fireworks. I love that. Right. I would want to Google drone fireworks or drone light show right now and—
I will invest in a drone light show company right now because I believe— as soon as I saw it—
That would just be a cash flow thing. That would make cash from the first couple weeks. Yes, after you get started getting bookings, right? Exactly.
And drones are kind of like commodities now. Like, you can buy very cheap drones. The programming of drones is very, very simple now. And then the last piece is, by the way, there's somebody could make a no-code type of tool to program drones. People are doing no-code type tools to program, you know, like Amazon Alexa, like voice apps. I can make a voice— I can make an Alexa skill without knowing how to code now. Somebody's gonna do the same for programming drones as drones get more and more popular.
Love it.
So 2 ideas right there. Okay, go.
What's the next? Okay. So you were talking about someone who had a directory that would tell you the best no-code tools. Okay. So my company, The Hustle Trends, we're a small business of about 30 employees. We make, let's just say, 8 figures in revenue. So a small business, but big enough that we are spending money on stuff. So the way our costs work are we spend the 3 top tiers are advertising to get new customers, people, employees. And the third one is software. I was doing our accounting the other day and looking at our numbers. So our company, like I said, is small. We might spend $20,000 to $30,000 a month in software.
Yep. These are things like, you guys may not use this, but MailChimp and then Slack and then other tools.
But then also payroll. I just paid $15,000 for a year's to switch to Rippling or close to $15,000. Kaiser Healthcare, like just like all these like platforms, like stuff that you just have to have. Including payroll, HR stuff, performance review stuff. Right. Anyway, I bet you I've wasted at least $100,000 in the lifetime of our company by selecting software that I didn't know why I did it because I thought it was a thing. And then I realized like, oh, wait a minute, this is like already packaged into this other thing. And I'm like, shit, I got to like, I'll just, I'll just let the— so like right now we're paying $2,000 a month for something and I'm like, damn, this other thing already like is going to offer this. I just got to let this expire, I guess. I just, I'm out of the money. And so But here's the thing is that most all early stage companies have like, it's like an 80/20 thing. Like 80% of us all just need the same problem solved. Right. And so I've been thinking a lot about this, how this could be solved, almost like a business backend in a box, which is what like Gusto or Zenefits or something is trying to offer. But what I'm interested in is content sites, like a Wirecutter. In my head, I'm like, why is there someone not blogging and just telling me like, all right, you need your basics. This will do the job. Just install this suite of tools. You're good. Right. That would've saved me so much money. And here's why it's lucrative for the content owner is because, so let's say, I don't know this for a fact, but it, it is generally true with a lot of companies, something like a Mailchimp. If I tell you to sign up to Mailchimp and use my link and you pay $100 a month for Mailchimp, Mailchimp will pay me the affiliate $30 a month for life.
Right. Amazing.
For life.
Huge affiliate fees.
And that makes sense. So Trends is a subscription business. I will gladly pay someone like a 30% percentage for a new customer for life, right? Well, we do actually. And in my head I'm like, someone save me money and just tell me, like, do the— be the Wirecutter of business software and just tell me exactly what to do. I don't want to read this article like this really long thing. Just tell me, you know what I mean?
Yes. I have an idea that's similar to this in the same space, but this is a company called Vendr. I'm looking them up right now, so I make sure that I get it right. V-E-N-D-R. Is their company. And I think what they're doing, I might be wrong, but I think what they're doing is you pay for, you know, these same 7 pieces of software. What they do is they realize that you can, all these are negotiable. All the prices are negotiable. Mailchimp's price is negotiable. Slack's price is negotiable.
They do group buying.
They do basically group buying and they do negotiation on your behalf. That's cool. And whatever they save you, they keep a cut of whatever they saved you. And because companies spend so much on software and especially big companies, they spend so much on software. These guys will manage your contracts, so they show you what cycle everything's on, when it expires, all that stuff. And they save you money on the— I love that.
I was just telling someone the other day, I'm like, man, I just looked at our expenses and we had 2 or 3 different people paying for Photoshop and 2 or 3 people paying for like the Wall Street Journal. I'm like, God, we should have just shared this. What are you guys doing?
Like, I just want to sign up for something and they just find out where all the duplicates are or things that we're not using and they automatically cancel it for me and I'll give them a cut of the revenue of the Like, I looked up this company and I have one template email that I send to like a few companies a year, which is just, hey, founder's name, hey Ryan, I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love this idea. Let me know if I can help or invest. I sent it to them and then we got in touch. But like, this is one of those ideas that I love, love, love, love, love, love.
Basically. Great. We're on the same page.
Okay. I got another one for you. So this is kind of a follow-up on last week's. So we talked about the miniature cookware, and I was like, oh, of course people love mini stuff. This week, what I like what you guys did, which was you followed up. There's a presentation that you guys made. I don't know if you saw this deck that was like, Steph made it, mini everything. Yeah, shout out to Steph. So mini everything. It was like miniature cookware is on the rise. Guess what? Tiny homes is also on the rise. Guess what? Here's this other thing. Also, here's how they're doing it. They're leveraging YouTube because tiny stuff is really entertaining to like vlog about. So people are vlogging, hey, I live in this 100-square-foot tiny home.
Do you think they're getting millions of subscribers? This tiny home thing is the greatest.
And so there's something to this mini thing, and I just liked the follow-up deck because it actually shows that you could build a brand around the lifestyle of tiny, of minimalism. And if you look at like Marie Kondo and kind of minimalism, I think is a growing trend, and I think that tiny stuff and miniature versions of things is related there. And so you could build a brand that does the cookware, that does the homes. You could do everything just with one powerful overarching brand.
Yeah, that was a good deck. I love that. I had no idea that miniature was such a thing. But when you actually think about it, getting distribution, getting eyeballs on a business that sells these miniature things, so easy, just because like you already can see what the Instagram ad is going to look like in your head. Like there's a novel, there's like 10 or 20 different combinations of an Instagram ad where you're like, oh, well, the click-through rate on that's going to be stupidly high.
Yeah, exactly. You know, I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw one of those Tasty videos and Tasty videos, if you haven't seen it, it's those videos on your feed that are like, it starts with like a really juicy burger. And then you see somebody putting some sauce on it and like all of a sudden you've watched 30 seconds. It's a 30-second recipe. And I like this general premise of working backwards from what would work on the Instagram feed.
That's how I think about things.
What's really visual, what's really novel and would catch my eye on Instagram and then work backwards and build a business.
That's how I think about it, which is I like the AIDA principle. Attention, interest, desire, action.
Okay. Attention, interest, desire.
Yeah, that's my framework when I do copywriting. So when I think of a business, I go, ooh, does this have a really fast attention-grabbing headline or attention-grabbing video? And then like, can I make anyone stop in their tracks? Okay. And then can I interest them as to like get them to fall down the cliff a little bit further to watch my video? And then can I make them desire it by actually showing them the value? And then can I easily collect their money by getting them to take action? Right. So like a tiny home would be a little bit difficult if you have to do financing, but like a miniature set of something.
Let's—
$50, just take your credit card, that's easy.
I can't have it in San Francisco, but I One day when I move, I will be in Heartbeat.
Yeah, and so I thought, oh, this is another one of those, hey guys, I love, love, love, love this idea. This is brilliant.
Did they get back to you?
Uh, well, we'll see. I got an intro from a friend, and so, so we'll see. But like, my parents have a tiny backyard. I have a tiny backyard. If I could put a little tiny home in the tiny backyard, I would do that.
Is that— what's it— is it considered a structure? Do you have to get permits?
So all the big cities, because they don't let you build, the compromise that they're doing on the regulatory level is they're saying, okay, these in-law homes which is what these are called, like your in-law guest house or whatever, these are now allowed. So if you have this much space, you're allowed to put an additional structure because they think, oh, that kind of eases the burden on the housing problem in a lot of these cities. And so they actually are encouraged, whereas before it was outlawed for a very long time. That's awesome.
Love this. Love this. I love anything that makes it really easy for someone to make side income.
Right.
Easy. Okay. I think I have one more on my list. Okay. So I'm sick of talking about direct-to-consumer stuff. Okay, like hard goods. The reason why is I don't think it's very intellectually challenging. It's just like the same crap, but you just smack on lowercase letter logo and like a pastel color, and then you triple or quadruple the price and call it premium. Easy, right? Do it, but it's easy. But I do like the ancillary things around it. So there's this guy who I know— I'm not close with him, but I've hung out with him a couple times. His name's Syed, S-Y-E-D. He owns this blog called WPBeginner. Okay, it's an 8-figure a year blog, and all he does is he blogs about the best WordPress themes and plugins. And over the years, I've gotten to know him and I've read about him. What Syed has done is built an empire, a WordPress empire. So he owns WPForms, which is installed probably by a million people, and if you want the premium version, it's like $50 a month. He owns OptinMonster. He owns, like, I'm almost positive he owns 40 or 50 more plugins. And if I had to guess, I would say he makes $50 million a year doing this. And then what he's done is he's, uh, this blog that he has, WPBeginner, he's been able to see what's the most clicked on affiliates or themes, and then he just goes and buys them or starts them. And it got me really interested in this. And so there's this company called Envato. I wrote about it on Trends a while ago. And Envato, all they are, they probably wouldn't like my oversimplification, but it's basically a marketplace for WordPress themes and plugins. And since 2008, this thing has grossed $300 million in sales. And in 2017, they did $94 million in revenue with something like $33 million in profit. Right. And I'm amazed at that. And so I ask myself, well, what's the next thing? Well, it's, it's not even the next thing. It's already here. It's called Shopify. A friend of mine, I mentioned him earlier, Andrew Wilkinson, last week or two weeks ago, he announced that they raised $25 million or $30 million and their whole purpose of raising this money is to go out and buy Shopify plugins. And I think that it's not like early, early, but it's still early enough that there's a lot of—
there's still opportunity left.
And so I think that people— I think Chrome plugins are like this as well. I'm going to be incredibly fascinated to see all the Shopify plugins and a holding company exists that will buy all of these.
Yep.
So if 22% of all the websites are using WordPress, there's going to be this economy around making your WordPress site better. And these guys have capitalized.
I bought one as well. Shopify is very similar where I don't know what the percentage is of percentage of online stores that use Shopify, but I guess it's— I would guess it's probably also like 22% or 50%, you know, something like that. Therefore, and also these people are all making money or have the dream of making money on their shop. So it might be even the Plugins marketplace might be even better, or might be even better.
Yes. And so if you Google WeCommerce, which is the name of Andrew's new company, you'll see they go, we've just raised $33 million or $30 or some number like that, and all we're going to do is buy Shopify partners, which means plugins and things like that, right?
Not the shops themselves.
Gotcha. And so I like this theme, and I like what you said there too, which is that Part of that empire is the content sites that say, hey, we recommend this, here's a tutorial about how to do this.
You need insider knowledge, right? And so these guys have insider knowledge because they own an agency that would build Shopify stores for people. And so they started like, oh man, everyone's installing like this commenting software for their Shopify site, right?
That's that third type of luck, the keen eye that's able to see opportunities before others.
Yeah, and that looks really easy to get. You just get in the mix, right?
Okay, I have another one that's similar to this. So my buddy Zach has sleep apnea. And I think I also have sleep apnea. I just haven't gone and done the sleep test because I don't want to get diagnosed because A, the diagnosis is really annoying. You have to go sleep overnight at this lab or whatever. And then B, if you have sleep apnea, which a lot of people do, you get put on this like breather machine when you sleep and it's supposed to help, but it's like you feel like, you know, a dying patient given the way that the treatment works. And so Zach went through this process. He's going through this process where he is like, all right, I've had this my whole life. I've been snoring and nobody wants to sleep in the same room as me. And I think I have the sleep apnea thing, but this whole system seems busted. Here's what I'm gonna do. So he created a YouTube channel called Sleeping with Zach. And so for 30 days, he's basically gonna document his journey of figuring out, do I have it? How do I get tested? Trying out all the different products in this industry to be like, what actually works and what's bullshit? And then getting to the bottom of like, can I actually cure my sleep apnea in a way that I want? And I think this is a really, really smart way to start this business. I think it's a catchy name. I think doing the YouTube videos will be fun. I think other people want to see it and not be sold something, but say, oh yeah, this guy's like me. He's had problems snoring his whole life and he's trying to solve it.
He's trying to try all the different— What's Zach's last name?
Hargraves.
I think I know him.
Yeah, he's— yeah, he's in our kind of circle.
Here's my prediction: if he executes on this well, he will be able to sell this, this for at least $1 million. Yeah, to a sleep apnea company, or make $1 million in sponsorship So there's the content side of things.
And then if that starts to pick up steam and, you know, there's the potential also to even start a sleep apnea company where, you know, he actually devises a better product for either the diagnosis or the— like, could you not diagnose this with a phone listening to you while you sleep? Could you have a wearable? Or is there on the treatment side, is there something?
Well, so long as he has the sleep apnea audience.
Exactly.
The sky's the limit.
Exactly. That's why I like that he started with the YouTube channel. Normally I would just be like, just cut straight to the chase. But in this case, I like the idea of starting with the audience. And seeing if you can build that—
Sleep with Zach.
—group of people, yeah. And I called this approach the curious beginner. So I believe in content there's like two major routes you can go. You're either the generous expert. I know something, I'm gonna tell you guys about it, and I can get famous for that. The other one is I know nothing, but I'm gonna go do all the work and research, and I'll share with you guys what I'm learning. I'm just as clueless as you. That's the curious beginner. And so I like that he's taking the curious beginner approach.
I say the same thing. When you want to find good social content, just learn and post what you learned the week before, right?
Exactly. It works. And this— the way I do this podcast is both. So the— when I interview guests, that's my curious beginner. I'm saying, hey, how'd you do this? Can you tell me what you learned? And I'm just sharing it in real time, what I'm learning from these successful people. I'm just sharing. And then this episode is a little bit different where it's like, hey, we have some expert knowledge about some different opportunities, different spaces, because Trends is doing all this research. We have friends that are doing interesting things. We're thinking about stuff, and we're just giving away these ideas for free, essentially.
Okay, can I wrap it up with one idea? Yes, please. Okay, this is not a trend. It's like a case study type of thing. So there's this company that you're friends with, the guy Steve. We don't have to talk about it too much because he's gonna be on your—
yeah, he's coming on the pod at some point.
So I read an article, this company called Social Chain. I think I'm gonna dumb it down about what I think it is. Is that they own loads of different Twitter handles, which I actually follow a ton. And one of them is called like Failures, or one of them is called like Shit Men Do or something. And it's just like funny Twitter videos.
They call them theme pages. Theme pages.
I love them. I follow a lot of them. Or like This Day in History. And it's an agency basically.
So I'll give you the brief story because it's kind of amazing. Steve's 18, 19 years old, starts a company, and he's targeting college students. It's like a Craigslist for college students. He wants to market, but he has no money because he's 19 years old, he's broke. And so he's like, oh, you know what, me and all my friends, we all follow these two Twitter accounts. One was like Shit Freshmen Say, and then the other one was like Overheard in the Library or something like that. And these student-themed meme accounts, and they had millions of followers. And so he reached out to him and was like, hey, can I get you to shout out my product? And it turns out it was owned by like another student at the school. Like, all of these meme pages were created by like a 17-year-old kid just having some for some fun. And then, you know, fast forward 6 months and now they have 2 million followers and they didn't kind of realize they were sitting on a gold mine. But Steve was pretty smart. He did realize that. And so he started to accumulate these. He started buying them when he could, like, hey, I'll give you $500 for your page. And people were like, all right, cool. And then when he couldn't buy them, he would partner with them and say, hey, can I add you to my network of theme pages? And when we get some advertising money, I'll give you, uh, you know, I'll pay you to post. And so he built up this agency. They had about 25 employees. All of them were under 23 years old. So it was like the upstart ad agency. He would go on stage and he would start a talk and he would be like, hey, we control the internet. And people were like, okay, what are you talking about? And he's like, watch, uh, gimme a word and I'm gonna make it trend on Twitter by the end of this talk. And somebody would throw out a word from the audience and then the theme pages would all start like dropping like memes about that, that word. And sure enough, by the end of the talk, it'd be like the number one trend on Twitter. And so he harnessed this and then did the same thing with Instagram, and he built the biggest collection of these theme pages. And it's like influencers, but you don't have to deal with the personalities because it's a, it's a theme. It's not a human being that's behind it. And so you can actually control all of the influence, and you can own the influence instead of being like the manager to a Logan Paul.
So the idea of this sounds amazing to me. Yes, when I hear you describe this, I'm like, if that is as good as you're saying it is, I think that's Amazing. My prediction is that it is a horrible business. And let me explain why and we'll find the truth. I definitely want to be wrong. Maybe a month ago I did a breakdown of what I think Gary Vaynerchuk's VaynerMedia, what his revenue is and what his employee headcount is. And so I've tracked it for 9 years. And so this is all based off of public data. So it could be wrong, but this is straight out of his mouth. So I got it from year 1 to 9 and it basically ranges from or it starts at $500,000, $1.3 million, $4.7 million, $14 million, $30 million, $54 million, $76 million, $100 million, $125 million. So that's super fast growth. But in order for that to grow, his headcount has grown from 5, 20, 30, 125, 300, 525, 600, 800, 800. So the rev per headcount is like under $100,000. Right. That's what I think. Well, these— when I hear this company in an article I read about the social chain thing,, and I have no insider information. And so you'll have that soon. I'd like to know the truth. It said something like 800 employees and like not a lot of revenue.
Yeah, I think that's wrong. So I think they have a lot of revenue, but we'll have Steve clear the air. So before speculating, I would say this: agencies are bad businesses in general. Maybe bad's not the right word.
Pain in the ass is the right word.
They're pain in the ass because you're dealing with clients, which are typically a pain in the ass, and a lot of headcount, which is also a pain in the ass. But the reason I say that is because they're not very defensible, right? Like, you don't accrue a whole bunch of value. You kind of have to keep fighting for clients, and you have to— and the channels you're advertising on always change. And it's not like you're building one product. You're constantly having to be the most creative kid on the block coming up with a thing that's gonna give the clients some performance. So I don't love agencies. What I did like that they did was they started launching their own products to their own audience. So, so that's the twist. They use their data to say, oh look, we have these 5 pages about food. The audience is all female. Let's create cookware. They did another one with women's athleisure and they created an athleisure brand. You know, I'd have to look it up.
It's in my DM somewhere. Yeah. And I think you should have an entire episode around this because— and I wrote about this. If you sign up for Trends, you'll see this, or if you're already part of Trends, I'll share it in the group actually right now, or I already have. Basically, if my numbers are right, which they could be wrong, but I think they are. I think that having an agency like this looks cool on the outside is hell on the inside. Because like at my company, we're growing and we're profitable. But if I want to be more profitable, I'm just not going to spend on advertising and I'll just make millions of dollars in profit. And I can do that with a click of a button. When you have an agency, it doesn't work like that. Right. And I see these numbers and I'm like, oh my God, this sounds like hell.
Yeah, I don't know. We'll see.
We'll find out. Well, I guess we will. So if you own an agency, tweet at us and let me— you can tell me if I'm right or wrong, but it seems like a grind. It seems really hard.
We should give a shout out to the guy who did the airplane cocktail kit.
So yeah, so last week Trends wrote about airplane cocktail kits and how people are searching like that like crazy.
So explain what this is. What is an airplane cocktail kit?
So it's not— I'm not the target demo because I don't drink, but apparently I guess when they serve alcohol on a plane, they don't really give you a lot of accessories. And so this, it comes with— I think it comes with sugar.
It comes with all the mixers. So let's say you want to have a Moscow Mule. A great drink. When the air hostess is coming down the aisle, she's not gonna stop and make you a Moscow Mule and mix the bitters and do this thing and shake it up.
But this looks like a little sewing kit, right? And it has all you need. I think it's like you could charge $20 for it.
It's $24, I think $25 to buy one of these. It's nicely designed. I looked at the packaging, looks cool, that's for sure. I'm also not the target demo. I would never buy something— I barely drink. But I get it.
It's like, I get it, like I would buy that for someone as a cute gift. And so this guy, we wrote about it, and then an hour later he comes back and he goes, hey everyone, I just bought airline— what was it? It's like airlinecocktailkits.com. Yeah, yeah. He like, he goes, I'm gonna start selling them, right? I was like, I don't know what he's gonna do with it, but I appreciate the like bias for action of like, you know what, it doesn't matter what he does with it because if he creates a Shopify store and then runs some of these Instagram ads where like the theme behind the ad is like, you like make it look like you're in like a a smoke jacket and like, uh, in your like den with mahogany wood and you zoom out and you're really on the airport, right? Or, you know what I mean? And you like make that ad, it's gonna— you could— you will sell $10,000 a month in products, right?
Yeah. So shout out to— I think his name's Ankur who, uh, who bought the domain and took some action right away. Okay, cool. If you like this, let us know. You can email me, it's puri.shawn@gmail.com. If you are doing one of these ideas, let us know. We want to track it and hear what happens.
And we'll be doing these for a while longer. And this is my pitch that I will always be giving is if you want to be part of Trends and get these reports that my team is doing all day, trends.co/million, you'll get like a special deal if you sign up there.
Trends is so good right now that I don't know if it's because you guys launched a new product and you really care about it, so you're making it really freaking good every week. So I'm like, is this sustainable? Like, can they continually— like, a year from now, I'm good. I'm curious. I don't know. Is it gonna be as good?
Here's what I think's gonna happen. I think Trends is gonna turn into like Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal, or like The Hustle is going to turn into like The Wall Street Journal, and Trends is like our real estate section. Okay. And I think our goal—
I think it's like your high value.
Yeah, I think we're gonna have multiple sections. So right now Trends is like a general interest thing. Soon we're gonna have Trends just for software, then it'll be just for D2C stuff. And I think you'll pay one fee and you can get access to all of it.
It's really interesting right now, so I like it. Whoever's, whoever's behind it, great job. Okay, cool, we're done.