#22 - Cloud Kitchens, Kava Bars & Religious Products

Okay. Million Dollar Brainstorm. We're back. You've been in Hawaii. Tell us about that.

If you guys Google lobby conference, you'll see it. A lot of people write about it as if it's this douchey event, which is— it definitely checks the boxes from the outside of being that.

Okay. What's douchey about it?

It's expensive and it's in Hawaii and it's a bunch of tech people. I don't think that's douchey, but it definitely checks many people's boxes.

And it's like exclusive, right?

It's like, I think it's like invite only.

100 people.

Yeah. Yeah. Small number. It's like an invite only thing. So it definitely checks all the boxes. To fit that stereotype. It's called Lobby Conference.

So how did you get invited?

One of my investors, Narandra, he referred me. Okay, so it's this— you can Google it to learn about it, but it's this event hosted by David Hornick, one of the partners at August Capital VC. 150 or 200 people, invite only. They've done it for 13 years now. And the guys who were there on the first year, many of them are still there. And it's like internet OGs, like Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, was there. Kevin Rose.

Kevin Rose, dig.

I had dinner and hung out most of the time with Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora. Yep. Like all these guys who were like maybe my age now but are in their 40s, right? Who were still trying to have a hit and have now had some hits. It was awesome. It was great. Two takeaways. Yeah. Number one, Gen Z, totally, they're fucked.

Okay.

Why? We talked about like, we, there's this one.

Were they there? I don't think they were there.

No, there was like, we were, we had these like little meetups about, uh, like, and we would talk about interesting things. Gen Z, I didn't realize it. They're having very little sex. They're doing a lot of drugs, but they're not drinking.

And a lot of them have depression I meant Gen Z is like 21 and younger right now.

Uh, maybe 24, 24 and younger.

Okay.

Yeah. The suicide rate's high. The depression rate is like astronomical.

A lot of who was talking about this, who was like the one woman who runs like a research firm for Gen Z.

So it was very much like, well, here's what the cool kids think. But like, I realized at that time I'm like an old guy who's like, well, how do they use?

Yeah, exactly. Old people talking about young people. Yeah. It never fails. Funny.

I was like, I was like the youngest guy there. People had Gen Z children. And they were talking about it. Right, right.

Okay, fair enough. So that was one takeaway.

What's the second? The second thing, there was tons of like rich ballers there, like really wealthy. And a lot of them seemed just horribly like down, depressed and not like that.

If you're young or if you're rich, you're depressed.

That's what I'm learning. Well, like, and this is something that's kind of like, I can't believe I'm saying this because everyone who's young hears this and no one believes it, which is that money will not make you as happy as you think it will.

Right.

I saw this firsthand very clearly.

What made you say this? So they're at this conference and they were just kind of recluse or what made you feel this? Or they were sharing like, look, I mean, I'm not feeling great.

First of all, yes, a lot of people— there was this one gathering, it was like a bunch of small sessions that people would complain about stuff, like say, here's what I'm struggling with. And you think that these people who have it all figured out, they definitely don't, right? People brought their families and you see like the interactions that people have had with their husbands or wives or kids. And it's like, this guy on the surface appears like this baller, but he just has— he's going through the normal bullshit that every family man is going through. Right, right, right.

Um, yeah, I have a, I have a friend who's— I don't know how wealthy he is, but close to a billionaire. And he basically, he was talking about this, how he was feeling this way. And he's like, the problem is no one wants to hear about an unhappy Billionaire. He's like, you will get zero listeners to that, like, talk. He's like, so you end up just sort of bottling it up and going on your way.

What you're saying and what happened this past weekend, and I have a few friends that just sold— your friends too— just sold big companies. And I was with one of them and we went to the ATM because he was like wanting to have like a celebratory where he like printed out his receipt.

$200 million on the ATM receipt. Wild. Wild about. And then we went and had dinner at like a Whole Foods, like $7. Yeah. Like we went to a grocery store, I think, and just ate on the patio. And he was stressed out. He was like, what am I gonna do with this? And I was like, dude, when are people gonna like chill and see—

there's a Jim Carrey quote where he goes, I wish everybody could be rich and famous so they would know that that's not the answer.

Yeah. That's depressing.

This podcast is like all about building successful businesses called Million Dollar Everything. I feel like half the conversations are like, yeah, money's not the thing.

I think we need to reiterate that, which is that it's not. It's just like if you're training for an event or training for weightlifting, you are no different from 150 pounds to 300 pounds in terms of like bench press. It's just the act of pursuing that is—

Yeah, the act of pursuing is fulfilling in itself. And the other thing is when you have money, you have freedom. But you don't need—

You need less than you think.

Yeah, you need less than you think. But that freedom is very powerful. Okay, so let's do it. Ideas, what do we got? We promised the people some ideas, talking about different trends, talking about different ideas that we find interesting. You wanna go first or me?

You.

What's the company called?

Made Bathrooms. Made. Yeah. And so all you do is you say, yeah, I want that bathroom. Like you don't have to hire a contractor, go through ideas with them, figure out what you want for the sink versus the toilet versus the walls. It's like, no, no, this is the bathroom.

Do you want this in your house? Is this like a Silicon Valley thing or like—

I don't think that they're super Silicon Valley centric. They are available here, I saw.

But is this like a new startup?

Like it is a startup. Yes, it is a startup. So it's a direct-to-consumer turnkey renovation. And so most people who do home renovations want kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly they're starting with bathrooms, will probably expand to kitchens. The second thing, they're taking all the thought out of it. I love that. This is a beautiful bathroom. Do you want this one, this one, or this one? We have 3 models. And then I thought, wow, because they only have 3 models, they're probably getting phenomenal prices, you know, economies of scale on buying the materials they need to do this. They're training contractors to like deliver the exact bathroom. And so they're probably training staff that's like just has to learn this one thing. And for the buyer, they're taking all complexity of this kind of tangled project. Like, oh, do I want to do a home renovation right now?

Like, elimination of choice.

Elimination of choice.

Okay, that I think that should work for haircuts. Men haircuts, like barbers.

Yeah, when I go to the barber, I want to choose like I'm at Subway, be like, here's the 14, I'll take the number 12 large.

Because everyone gets— 80% of people get the same shit. They say short on the sides, a little bit off the top, right? Okay.

Yeah, I don't even know why they ask me. I'm like, just look at it and just make it shorter.

Okay, so what else could that work for where like you eliminate choices? I think interior design design and renovation is like a great idea.

I think that's a cool concept. I'm going to think about that for a little while of what to start that where you eliminate choice. I mean, look, it goes both ways. Like the more products a company launches, the more money they make typically. But also a lot of times when you just sell 1 or 2 or 3 things, it makes life better and you can—

and you can deliver on that service in a way that you can't if you have this like larger variety of choice and customizability. And so it won't work for everything, but if it does work for one thing, and I think it'll work for something like bathrooms and kitchens, that's such a high ticket price thing that that could be a really big business. So I'm excited.

Into that, guys. Okay. Something we covered on trends and I experienced this weekend because people were talking about it. Kava bars or—

Yeah. What is kava?

I've heard of it. I've done it. I lived in Australia for a little while. Fiji is like Australia's Mexico. So it's like we're like— it's like the Caribbean.

Like, yeah, of course.

And so I went to Fiji for 2 weeks and we hung out and we drank kava. It's like a root. It tastes like dirt and you mix it with water. And we would just sit around a circle with the folks who lived in the Fijians. And we would drink it and it gives you a mild high effect. It kind of felt a little bit like weed. Yeah. Where you're like chill and people loved it. Immediately when I went home from Fiji, I wanted to buy some more and it was really hard to buy it.

And what's the experience? You said tastes a little bit like dirt.

It tastes bad. It's a drink and it's a communal thing. You sit around.

Okay. So it's like hookah in a way, or are you passing it or something?

It's like hookah, but it definitely gives you a small high.

Gives you a small high.

It's just like smoking weed with your friends.

Right.

Kinda.

So on a, on a scale of like, I don't know, is it like a cigarette? Is it less than weed?

Is it like Molly, less than weed, less than Molly, more than a cigarette, less than alcohol.

Okay, gotcha.

What stops you from doing it? Because you're super into it. I'm not that into it, so it makes sense that I haven't done it. You're super into it. Why haven't you tried?

Because I don't know who to trust.

But even your buddy does it, right?

Yeah, but he's a weirdo. And I tell him, I don't know if I could trust you because you're extreme. So like, if I could find like a normal person who could be like, yeah, this one's a little too much.

Like if you could go into a clinic and you're like, great, under supervision in this cool environment, if it looked like a spa.

Yeah. And so I would— you want that? Yeah, I would love that. And I went to a session where I was, I met with a guy who was going to take me through the process and I got into an argument with him because he was talking to me about, I was like, ask him what he did for work. And he like was a former venture capitalist, but then he was talking about how capitalism was horrible. And I was like, well, that doesn't, so like, why are you charging me? And so anyway, we got in a fight over like values. And so he kicked me out of the group.

Okay.

But I was almost on the verge of trying it. So I'm really interested in, we discovered Kava or we talked about Kava and trance. I think that ketamine, crazy interesting. I think these things are going to be much bigger.

And there's a related trend with this, like Kin Euphorics. Have you heard of this? Basically, there's a trend of non-alcoholic— Oh, yeah. So they're non-alcoholic drinks, and what they are is, I think Kin Euphorics has like some— I don't know what chemicals they put in, but it's supposed to give you some kind of buzz without being alcohol.

Yeah, we covered the non-alcoholic stuff as well. So non-alcoholic beverages. I've drank non-alcoholic beverages now for about 8 years. I drink non-alcoholic beer regularly. I like it.

Like what? Like a ginger beer type of thing?

What?

What?

No. O'Doul's was for the longest time has been the only one. But over the past 3 years, Heineken has introduced some Japanese brands have come about a little more popular in Japan. So the Japanese brands have come to America, right? There's been a lot of new variety and that's a growing trend that we actually have already written a report on is non-alcoholic beverages. And interestingly, Gen Z is drinking significantly less than millennials. And yeah, exactly.

I've seen that trend firsthand. And then when I saw you guys write about that, it made a lot of sense to me.

But Heineken, the CEO of Heineken, said that the fastest growing category is— they call it 0.0. That's the name of their brand— is these 0.0 beers, non-alcoholic beer, non-alcoholic beer. But they even have some that are non-alcohol and no calorie and no drink.

Yeah, you just drink nothing.

Yeah.

All right. I got another one. All right. So what if I told you that I could give you some IP, IP, intellectual property, like Star Wars, Pokémon, Hello Kitty, whatever. I could give you globally famous IP. Billions of people recognize this IP and I could give it to you for free and I could let you build a business around this IP at no charge. Would that be something you're interested in? Yeah, of course. OK. Religion. So I sort of had this realization the other day. Wanted to buy a gift for my niece and I was like, "What did I used to like when I was little?" I loved Where's Waldo books and I was like, "Where's Waldo?" I just went down the rabbit hole of like, "Who the hell made that? What is this? How is this so popular? Blah, blah, blah." Sort of thought, what's the What about the modern-day Where's Waldo? Could somebody create a new Where's Waldo book? So same premise, just finding pictures in a book, 'cause kids love books, but reading is tough, right? So this picture book is actually pretty cool, 'cause it's like active. You don't just like flip through the pages.

Who owns Waldo? Probably like—

So I read about the guy who made it. I forgot his name, but yeah, he, you know, whatever. A publisher owns it.

Probably crushed it.

And they crushed it. And I was like, what if you made a new Where's Waldo? I was like, well, part of the magic was that Waldo was this character that just worked. And I was like, what character could you use? And I was like, what if you did this with religion? 'Cause the other thing my sister always wants is to introduce culture to her kids in a way that they like, that's playful, that's fun, that's interesting. And so I was like, my family is like Hindu, right? So they have, Hindu is like 100 different gods. Oh, this would be cool. You basically have this page with a bunch of different little drawings.

Like stories about the gods.

And you're trying to find, yeah, you're trying to find Hanuman, and you're trying to find this god, and you're trying to find that god.

Can anyone own?

I was very close to going and starting this one. But it's not a founder fit for me. Like, I don't even believe in religion. So if somebody out there wants to do this, I will help you do this. I put a lot of thought into how you would do this, how you would grow it. But I think religion generally as a free source of popular IP is like an untapped opportunity.

So that's awesome. Two comments. There's this set of Googlers, ex-Google people. They either— I think they emailed me after our podcast who were Christians, and they created like a Christian meditation app. Have you heard about this? Yes.

Halo or something.

Someone messaged me after our podcast, and they told me the numbers, and it was astronomical.

Astronomical. Yeah, I've seen their numbers. They are really good. It validates this idea. They're doing it for Christians. Somebody else can do it for Catholics.

But is it just a Christian meditation thing?

It's exactly what I just described. It's a daily Christian meditation, which is basically like a prayer, and you hit the amen button when you're done, and you can share it. People love sharing religious shit on Facebook anyways, so it grows somewhat organically through that.

There is a lot of mainstream brands don't want to associate with some of these super popular conservative companies.

Yeah. And the people who typically, because I've bought ads on like religious websites and right-leaning political websites.

Where do you even go to do that? You just go direct or there's like an ad network for that?

Direct. Yeah, you can do direct, but like like, so like Breitbart. Yeah. Their marketing, I sent them to everyone's emails to understand how they're, what they're doing. Yeah. Breitbart has the most aggressive, like they'll let people buy their, their email lists.

Right.

They're the most aggressive and the most effective. Like they, they sent one email to me that said like, from the desk of Nancy Pelosi. And it was like a letter written about, and it said like, we're gonna come for your guns, so you better donate now. Right.

Like whatever. Crazy. Yeah.

I was like, oh, This is gonna kill it.

So anyway, you can get distribution there.

Oh yeah, I think, I think that there's a lot of undervalued distribution, but a lot of like the young techies who build this stuff are typically on the opposite end of that, so they don't even think about that, but it's there.

Yeah, I like that. I think traditional ad buys, that's a smarter way to ad buy. I think that works because again, you're charging on the other side through people who pay for that $79 a year subscription. The other thing is I think through churches you could get distribution. So you give the church the ability to make their own group in this thing and let them distribute it. Then it's like, "Hey, for the people who are not coming to church on Sundays or who want it Monday through Saturday, here's a way they can engage." The market size for this is like 200 million people.

Yeah. Only in America and only the Christian one, let alone the other religions.

Right, exactly. So I would actually start with Islam for this because there's a couple other specific app features.

There's like 4 billion Islamic people in the world or Muslims in the world, specifically.

The type of people who start these companies will start with Christianity, so just start on the other side with like a super popular religion.

Hindu is kind of cool. It is. Because you have more characters.

But I think that, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. For some reason, I don't feel like that's the starting point, but maybe. Although one is like Mormons. Like, how do you go for the most devout, even if it's a smaller number of people, but like very active?

I think Mormonism though, that's the fastest growing religion in the world.

Yeah, I know, but it's like a small base.

But yeah, but that could be a good one to attach yourself to.

Exactly. So anyways, religion. Okay. What else? It's not really an idea, but something to talk about. So ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens. Are you familiar?

Yeah. DoorDash. I just saw a photo Someone drove by a place in Palo Alto and DoorDash had just opened up a kitchen.

Yeah. For those who don't know, a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen is basically a restaurant that doesn't have the brick-and-mortar storefront where you can come in, sit down, and get a meal. You can't go there and order. It only exists to make food that gets delivered on Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, and all these delivery apps that are out there now.

And he was like, these cloud kitchens. And so, his new company is all about, he's basically going into a city, he's buying up this like real estate that nobody wants, but it's very centrally located and kind of useless today. But what he's doing is converting it into kitchens and letting sort of food entrepreneurs come in, make food, create these little digital restaurant brands that only are optimized for delivery. So, you would do things differently, right? So, like you would want to make food that is, you know, you'd think delivery first.

Like no French fries.

—Yeah, exactly. You'd make food that is going to travel well. You'd package it. You'd put a lot more money into packaging because you're not spending money in other areas.

—And you don't need to buy all the furniture for a restaurant.

—And you can make money by partnering with delivery companies to say, "Hey, you should actually pay us to be on your network because we bring this awesome set of delivery-optimized food to you. So, in fact, you should be paying us per order to be on your network.

We are great supply for your network." So, you know who I originally saw was doing this was like a Chinese restaurant owned by a family and they were clearly just like hustlers and they were like, 'Oh, let's offer like hot dogs.' Or let's like— I could tell because it was like the same. There was just a bunch of ways that I'm like, 'Oh, holy crap, that's the same thing.' They just— it's like, these are— this is a Chinese family and they're making Mexican food. So anyway, I saw them doing that. But what I'm curious about is, is there one brand that is like, well, like— there isn't today yet.

Right, exactly. And so, and a lot of people who are great at making food are really bad at running business. And so they don't, they're not great at picking the right location for a restaurant, running the operations, managing the cash flow and all the stuff, a lot of them flock to food trucks for this reason, because it's like a simpler kind of business in a box. I think this is even simpler.

Yeah, and way more lucrative. Way more lucrative. Because you can be nationwide.

Exactly. Any concept that works in one city, you want to take to other cities because someone who owns these cloud kitchens will say, "Great, you want to expand? I already have infrastructure in 12 different cities. Just either you staff up or franchise your concept to other people." I'm incredibly interested in this.

If anyone is actually pursuing this, I would like to know about it.

People pursuing it that we know of, but I bet that there's a lot more, and I bet there's other angles to this that I'm not thinking about. So, if anybody's really interested in this, reach out, because we want to talk. Who's pursuing it? Travis is the main one that I know that's doing this.

It's obvious. If that guy, if he's into this, it's like— Right.

And he saw the Uber Eats numbers early on and was like, "Oh, shit. This is going to be a really big business." And I just saw an interview with Tilman Fertitta.

You know Tilman Fertitta? Yeah. And he was saying his restaurants are hurting a little bit because of how big delivery is.

Exactly. And I think people love the convenience.

He was like, I was shocked people actually are ordering— because he owns Morton's Steakhouse— he goes, people aren't coming into our restaurants as much, but we're still doing really well because they're buying it and bringing it home, right?

So I actually ran a restaurant like this back in the day. This is my first start of sushi, right? Sushi restaurant. And we got famous because we were the restaurant without a restaurant, where we were delivery only. But this was before Uber Eats, before Postmates. They didn't exist. So we were trying to get people to come to our website to order, and that was just very hard. Whereas every Every night, me or my wife opens up Postmates pretty much, and we kind of scroll through, and it's like, ah, do you want to order, or should we cook something? And so if our sushi restaurant had been on there, we would have been getting free customers.

What do you think is the best— okay, so what food is good delivered?

Sushi is actually pretty good delivered, because sushi is meant to be served room temperature. It's also packaged in a very tight wrap, so it doesn't sort of get loose and messy and stuff like that.

But anything potato-based is not. Have you ever noticed that? I know someone who worked at Uber Eats, and they had a phrase called keep your eye on the fries. And they had a whole team dedicated to McDonald's, the French fries.

So the main one is obviously pizza, right? So pizza is the most delivered food. People love pizza. So you really want to work backwards from that. Like, what do people order the most? And so the question is like the Domino's, Pizza Huts of today, like of tomorrow, I bet will get started here. Either those brands will start delivering and make this a big part of their business, or somebody will create a new pizza brand optimized for this. Maybe they don't sell full pies, maybe it's half, or I don't know. You'd have to think through what would it— what should pizza be? You'd have to think back from scratch.

Yeah, I saw that chart. You posted that chart. It was like, Domino's is the line that's up and to the right.

And Google, Facebook, just because they were valued really high right off the bat, or higher.

Do you know what's causing that? Why has Domino's stock been going up so much? Are they just crushing it?

Yeah, they're pretty forward-thinking. Yeah, I love it. I had the app, and their app is phenomenal. Yeah, so easy to order. The tracker is amazing. Yeah, it is. It's in the oven, it's coming, you know, 5 minutes from now. Here, it just left the store, it's gonna be at your door in 7 minutes.

Yeah, they're great. So this is interesting to me. I'm incredibly interested in this. It sounds— and this sounds kind of like a fun thing You and I both owned food businesses, right? I found that to be almost more rewarding than traditional internet things.

I found it to be way harder than everything I've ever done. I don't know about rewarding, but it made the least money of anything I've ever done. I learned the most, but it was also the hardest. Yeah. And I also feel like when we're in this tech bubble, it's very easy to like lose touch with like reality and how most people's job works, how the sausage gets made, all that stuff. And there's like a different level of respect, appreciation, and like understanding because, you know, working in service industry for a bit. I have a question for you. So, Do you use any of these book summary apps or anything like that?

I was thinking about that today. What were you thinking about? I think those are stupid.

Okay. Tell me why. What type of apps? Blinkist. Blinkist, right?

So like, that's cool. I think they're cool companies. They'll do really well. So what's stupid?

You don't like it as a user.

I'm not like that artistic of a guy, but sometimes I think like you gotta read it to understand like the, the new, like you gotta like really read the thing to get it. But the efficiency part of me is like, ah, it's kind of cool. Right. So I'm, I have mixed feelings on it, but I do think I would invest my time into it or money into something like that. Because I think it can work.

Yeah, because I'm thinking about doing this for fun. So I started reading more because ever since our company got acquired, there's these hours of the night that used to be like grind mode that I'm like, well, I don't really need to put that into my job. I'll put that into this podcast. I'll put that into like reading and learning and things like that. So I'm reading these books that I'm like, if I could summarize this for people, would that be useful?

And so the answer is definitely yes.

There's something kind of like off about it, right? Like, why did you say it's stupid? Like, how do I make it less stupid?

Well, I think there's a few things. The first thing is, so Otis Chandler, the founder of Goodreads, spoke at our event. Yep. Cool company. Really cool company. I think it's actually bigger than— they sold for $100 million. I think it's actually way bigger than Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. And then BookBub, you know, BookBub? No. They advertise with us and they spend a lot of money with us and the results are really great. And what they've done is it's a huge company now, or it's a startup. It's like basically an email for people who like Kindle books and they set out some free ones, some paid ones, and they're just an aggregator of cool stuff. And then some publishers will pay money to get their free book, like when a new release happens, they'll make it free for like a day just to get the, get a bunch of ratings. The book space, I think that's growing like crazy. Anything book related, right, is I would put my name on for sure or want to be part of. Right. That's one of the things we talked about with the whole Gen Z thing was that they're reading more than ever. But it does feel weird. I found myself whenever I read books, particularly I've always want to look up the characters significantly more. And you told me about with what you're doing with Blab, you were trying to do the same thing where you wanted to create communities around TV shows. I have found myself wanting to do that for books. I've not found a solution for that. Right, right, right.

You read what? You read a lot of biographies, right?

I read a ton of biographies.

Do you read anything else?

Yeah, I like to read fiction, like American classics. Catcher in the Rye, things like that.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something here because I'm reading these books and I'm like, "Oh, a good way for me to even just digest this is to try to distill it down into the most interesting bits and be able to explain it." If I can teach it, that means I've learned it. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to experiment. I'm going to see if I can make something that I would want if I was the reader.

The make it or break it though is the model that you choose because there's the affiliate model, but you're gonna be earning 4% on a $8 thing. That's silly.

Oh, I'm not even thinking about the business right now. I just wanna put out, put the content out there and see if people like it.

See if there's this guy named Nat and I came across his blog. He's always popping up on my Twitter feed and he just started doing what you did where he summarized books and then he just said, you could buy all my summaries for $100 and I think he's selling a ton of them.

Okay, nice. I'll check that out. Yeah, there's something to this. I don't know what it is. Okay. That's like a half-baked idea, but I'm gonna do something there. Do you have anything else that you've been seeing? Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah. What is that?

So I got a lot of criticism for that, but I know that's what the numbers say, but that doesn't sit right.

Yeah, something seems off about that.

The second thing is agencies. We talked about agencies. So a friend of mine who has a $50 million a year agency hollered and he wants to—

Ad agency, creative agency? Creative agency.

Okay. Which sounds like a miserable thing to do. I think that sounds like a horrible company.

So he reached out and he said—

Yeah, he wants to come and fill us in on all the, on the economics.

And what do you wanna know? So is it—

we'll get him on. We'll check it out. We'll see.

Because it's like there's like a few things that everyone starts when they're first getting going. The first thing is like they're like, how do we create like roommate matching? Thing, right? Everyone has that idea, and I've done it. To-do list. Yeah, to-do list. And then like, college invoicing. How do we sell our products to college kids? Like, like, like, okay, like, all this is like, and then it's like, uh, social media agency, right? So, uh, common ideas. Yeah, yeah. So I want to hear more about this agency stuff.

Uh, the other thing that came to mind for me with dogs was I was like, okay, given that 44% of people own a dog, what problem am I having as a dog owner? Maybe somebody could solve it. It's not a business I would want to start, but a product I want to buy is I take my dog for a walk here in the city, city's filthy, dog comes back in, my wife demands that we wash the dog's paws. So what are you gonna make, socks? I don't know, it could be anything, it could be socks. Kid mittens? A little jacuzzi that I put her feet in to like wash her feet real quick with the bag.

No, it's obviously socks.

Yeah, it's gotta be some kind of easy thing because I'm so sick of this like mini bath I have to give my dog twice a day.

What happens when you Google dog socks?

I haven't Googled dog socks, I don't know.

I would like to see what is on top.

Yeah, and I just want something that's like, I don't wanna put shoes on my dog, so like yeah, maybe more like socks or like even just like a thin, transparent little plastic thing that I could put on her feet and just tear away when we're done. I don't know. I need something because I'm sick of washing my dog's paws.

Per year. I believe they're profitable. Yeah, they raised $50-something million and total lifetime, and they've been doing this for a while, so I think they're probably doing well. Probably I think I think at that stage is more of a choice. It's like, do we have good ideas to go invest in or do we want to optimize for profits?

Well, they own like a bunch of stuff.

They do a bunch of different things. Yeah. So they do these subscription boxes and then—

They do one-off selling stuff. I mean, they have a bunch of little—

Yeah. They're doing a bunch of things. The other part I really liked from his story was they kind of invented the dog influencer on Instagram trend. So he was like, you know, it's kind of unclear, but it was definitely early.

I follow a ton of those guys.

Before that was a thing. Yeah. Follow a bunch of cute dogs that like are like my dog.

My wife cried the other day when one of her dog influencers died. Yeah, I've had literally the same experience.

That's crazy. And so they kind of, they basically started promoting all those dogs. They were like, hey, you're a cute dog, we will promote you, and in turn you promote our products. And they started this like affiliate thing early on, and, and it just became great content.

That sounds like the greatest company to work at, to be able to do that all day. That sounds awesome.

Yeah, if you're like a pet lover, they're hiring. So anyways, we'll see where that comes out. All right, we should wrap up. Anything you want to leave people with?

No.

Okay, on that note, we're done. See ya.