Data-Based Businesses, Executive Briefings, and Spotting Scams with Anand Sanwal

I love how, even though I tried to pick a non-nerdy data one, it actually underneath the hood was a nerdy data one. You're like the, you're a data hammer and the whole world is just little nails that you're just trying to hammer with your, you know, like, but dude, this is the best business there is. You're just hoovering in the data like a vacuum. You're the data Dyson. That's just taking in this data from everywhere you can.

Yeah.

Sounds about right.

Yeah. And more importantly, fan of the show and prolific idea guy. Before this episode, before we did this episode, he sent over a Google Sheet that is 77 rows of random startup ideas, which just tells me you're, you, you are, you're one of us. And, um, so this is great. You made our job really easy. We have a bunch of ideas we can go through. Uh, there's a few kind of interesting CV Insights stories that you've blogged about in the past I want to talk about, but let's do those at the end because, uh, I think the ideas are going to be a lot more fun.

Sam, you favorited yours. Sean, one of the reasons why he's fun, you said that he's one of us because the idea thing. That's true. He's also fun. Because even though he comes off like this, like polite guy who's like introverted, he's a shithead. Anand's a shithead. His Twitter is hilarious. He always— he writes this famous newsletter to like 500,000 people now, and he signs it with like, I love you. And in his Twitter, the bio says, please buy a CB Insights subscription. I owe people money. And like he always does, like he kind of pokes the bear a bunch in his stuff. So he's got that. He's got a really cool attitude. Um, but hopefully we'll get that out of you.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

My kids were, uh, my kids were excited that you called me a shithead, so I appreciate that one.

You're welcome. Uh, all right, so here we go. Uh, Sam, you put your favorites on the sheet, I put my favorites. What's interesting to me is we have almost no overlap. You, uh, only maybe 2 out of the 10 that you put down there were My favorites. I had completely different ones.

I'll tell you why.

I say we take turns where we say, tell us about blah, blah, blah, like the little, the little 3-word tagline, and he gets to pitch it and let's react and let's try to get through a bunch of these. So we might go on random tangents or drill down, but like, let's in general try to go, uh, you know, an inch deep on each one of these for now.

You want me to go first? Yeah, you go. So the reason why I highlight basically everything I highlighted, so CB Insights interests me because basically you're not coming up with any data. You're just organizing data that already exists in really easy to understand ways, and then you're selling it at high fees. And I think that's like the greatest business model on earth. And you've listed out a bunch of ideas, including like 6 or 7 that were more of these like data things. Data.

Yeah.

So you had one in there called Sawdust Data, and you have examples. You're like, you can look at what the government does. Like the government has all this data. You can make that clear and easier to understand for people. Um, Both the sawdust data as well as the, uh, government data products. What do you mean by all that?

That makes sense. With the, the business that Sean and I are and we're in, newsletter business, like people have all these questions, but it's kind of broken down into just a few things, which is just like figure out what content you can give people that they want to read every single day. And then figure out how to acquire users for profit profitably. And that's basically the, that's 80% of the business. What's like the 80/20 thing for these like data businesses? Is there, is there, or, or rather the 80/20 for making messy data, clean data and make it a product that people like?

All right, Sean, you want to do it?

Oh, sorry. You had one of your columns. So, so I told you you have 77 rows. So those are the different ideas, but then you had some columns. One of them was framework, frameworks or inflections. And that was your, that was one of your, your things, opaque, variable skew, high consideration. The other one you had was tiny but growing niches, like, or like inflection, like it might be time., for that to grow. What is that? Is that your other one that you look for in ideas? And we can give an example here of like, uh, here, let me grab one. Like you did this representation media. So you said extend the Rebel, Rebel Girls book for other communities. And then your framework was Tiny But Growing Niches. So talk about that idea and explain it with that framework.

That's a great idea. Uh, I've had the, I've had a similar idea because, uh, we get gifted some books that are like, uh, I don't know, like Hindu religion book or like, but it was like the kids version or something like that. It's like the, like, and it's like, oh yeah, if I'm going to read whatever, you know, Clifford the Big Red Dog, you know, like, is there, is there something that, you know, adds a little bit of something from our culture or religion, like makes it easy for me as a parent to like give them You know, something I want to give them while still being entertaining and accessible. And there's actually just not much that's out there for that. So, so I definitely, uh, think if you added up all those little, all those little different niches, that's, that could be quite big.

Yeah. I mean, I think if you kind of un-PC, if you found a story where the protagonist was like a little white kid, like make it a little brown kid, make it a little black kid, you know, like modify the story a bit and like, that's a winner. Right. Cause like. Kids love seeing like, oh, that kid looks like me, that's dope, right? And so like, you're off to the races there. I don't think it's that— nothing's hard, it just takes some work.

But yeah, dude, that's why my— that's why my wife loves Kim Kardashian. She like sees them, she's like, oh hey, look, they got fat asses too, dude. Fat in a good way, by the way. That's a good way.

When I met, uh, the comedian Hasan, uh, Minhaji, we He was like doing his live shows. And I had told him, I was like, he asked me something like, oh, what would you do with, if with my business, if you were me? And I was like, dude, I would stop this like live touring thing that comedians do. Like, this is so painful.

You're on the road.

Like, I don't know, 40 weeks out of 52 in a year. I wouldn't want to do that. I was like, you got to create a Broadway show. I was like, create like the next Hamilton. And then that goes on tour, right? Touring is a great business, but you just don't want to be the guy sitting on the stage. I was like, use your, creative and comedic genius to do that. That was my kind of big idea for him. He's all right, what's the show? And I was like, ah, dude, I don't know. Now I'm out of my depth. And then the next, like a week later, I just sent him a voice note and I go, Aladdin, but, but Aladdin's Black. And then he's like, what? And that was my whole voice note. And then he goes, um, what are you talking about? And I go, remember the Broadway show thing? I go, it's Aladdin, But they don't— it's not like Jasmine can't marry Aladdin because he's like a poor guy. No, no, no. Jasmine can't marry him because he's Black. Because like, you know, her family doesn't approve. And he's like, okay, so it's just he's Black instead of poor? I was like, hey, look, when you say it that way, it doesn't sound that good. But like, I'm telling you, there's something to this idea of he overcomes and they fall in love and the love wins. And he's like, all right, yeah, yeah, I'll add that one to the list.

Add that to the list. Yeah, that's what he said. He's like, stick to podcasting, Sean.

Well, yeah, representation media.

All right. Can I ask you about one? This is actually really fascinating and actually I think could be a bigger business than, than, I don't know if you think, but bigger business than a lot of people think. A daily executive briefing email.

Yeah, I don't, I, I'm not sure how big this one could be. I think I, I, I don't know if I put it in the sheet. I said you have like a dollar column, which is kind of like my indication of how big it is. I think this is like. A great side hustle business, right? So I— when I worked at American Express, every morning our CEO would get like a briefing from his chief of staff, right? Like, you know, here's what Capital One did, here's what Citi did yesterday, here's what Visa did, whatever. And it was like basically that person's job to like scour the internet and like look at financials and product launches and all this stuff. And there was a company that Scision bought called Bulletin Intelligence, which I don't think— I don't know how much they're doing with it, but it was basically that idea. It was going to be like your morning chief of staff email. And yeah, I think this is an awesome business that like somebody smart and industrious can, can build. And you— I think if you go niche, meaning like go financial services, because like if you get Amex, like the CEO of Citigroup like cares about— Citibank cares about mostly the same company, so you can reuse a lot of it. And it's not just the CEO, it's all like their division presidents, and they're like geography, like, you know, heads and all that stuff. So yeah, I think this is like— and, you know, I'm sure with generative AI and stuff, you could like make this really like efficient. But yeah, I think this is like a tens of millions of dollars business.

No, I think you're way off. So, um, have you heard of— you guys know Politico, right? Yeah, it's like, uh, Politico is like a news website for DC, all politics, but it's not from, uh, like a CNN, Fox News news perspective. It's more so like people who work in politics, they read Politico. Whatever, that's not interesting. What's interesting is that they sold recently to Axel Springer for over a billion dollars, and where they got roughly 9 figures, so $100 million plus of recurring revenue, was they had this— they have this service called Politico Pro. Have you guys heard of— not— have you heard of Politico Pro?

No. I mean, I know that's their premium offer. I don't know what's in it.

Yeah. You can charge a lot for this. Like these folks, like, as long as you deliver quality in the morning when they need it, like, yeah, there's, they have sort of massive budgets. And I think Bulletin had Bezos as a customer for a while. So like he was reading the Bulletin intelligence briefing every morning.

So what's that company called? Bulletin.

Bulletin Intelligence, Cision bought them many years ago.

Dude, the reason why I like, I like talking to you is like you and I are some of the few people that nerd out on— there's like all these data businesses out there. So you and I for years have talked about there's like Informa, which is like a $10 billion market cap, basically data and trade show business. Then there's Euromoney, which we've talked about, another publicly traded company. There's Cision, which like is just kind of an older company that no one— it just— these companies are just huge and they're just not sexy. So they're not talked about with our circle. But they're crazy fascinating to like learn about these companies because their margins could be huge.

You had one on here also that was the pricing data. So it was like Go extract the pricing data from every SaaS tool and, you know, go to their, go to their website, find the prices, organize all that information for things where it requires a demo quote. Like, I don't know, send a, you know, $5 an hour employee through that process, collect the pricing data. Now you have it. Now you can make that visible where they are hiding it on their website. And you basically have a giant, what, like a search engine or a database of of, okay, if I want to use some email, you know, send software, here's the, here's how the prices compare across them. Is that what the idea would be for that?

But That's actually the tagline. It was the tagline on your website, which is, uh, without data, you're just another idiot with an opinion or something like that.

I think that's great.

It was great. Right? I don't know. Do you guys use that?

We don't use that anymore. I think we, we still use like, in God we trust, all others gotta bring data. Like, so we'll use that in some—

who, uh, who comes up with this stuff? This is you or this is someone on your team who's like the witty copywriter.

These are just stolen from other people who are—

it's like a quote. The idiot one's a quote, I think.

Right. I think both of these are like, you know, somebody like some luminary and, you know, we, we footnote them in small print and give them credit.

Uh, do you, do you think that you guys being kind of silly is a leg up or do people criticize you?

Yeah. I mean, we get some criticism, but honestly, like B2B is so mind-numbingly boring that. Like it's, it's great as a way to stand out. But, you know, I tell the team, like, you know, love us or hate us, you should have an opinion on us. And so that's the general theme, right? Because most of it's like pretty vanilla and, you know, just kind of like jargony. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been, I'd say, a net positive for us. But we've lost some customers over stuff we've said offended them.

And what, like what?

You know, we did a ranking, one of VCs once, and we said a specific firm was losing in the ranking, and it was just an objective thing, and they were like, we're canceling our subscription immediately, right?

And, uh, um, what a loser move of them. Just proved my point. Oh, you don't— you don't want access to data now? You got— you got your feelings hurt and you canceled your own— your own data pipeline?

You're like, you're down another peg.

Yeah. Uh, so we've had, you know, that, and some people don't like— you know, I think when Trump hysteria was going, we'd like sometimes put an infographic with him in it and like we didn't have an opinion, but it was just like you just him and Elon Musk, like if you mention them, it's just like lunatics come out, right? And so like, and so it's good for engagement, but it is definitely like a little bit. It can be odd. Like you say something and people just like, you know, it's a cult and people go kind of crazy.

Like, you're a really good writer. And, or whoever's writing is really good. And you guys always use things like, um, your headlines are really good, but then there's like just phrases all over, like it's built into your culture. Like in your annual review, we're like, hey, we did pretty good for a company that isn't lighting money on fire like the rest of the VC world. Or like, just like little phrases like that. It just makes you stand out. And I think that that makes you have a voice and you guys are actually pretty good at that.

Yeah. And I appreciate that. I, I mean, I think it's, you know, it's partly for the, external market. It's partly for the team, right? Like you're selling B2B software. And so sometimes that can be like, you know, if you're 22 out of school, it's like, hey, that's not super inspiring. And I don't know exactly what that looks like. And then once we can show them we can have personality, we're in the tech economy, which is interesting. So yeah, it works. You know, we screw up a bunch of things, but that's been good for us.

If I was going to go out there and do what you said of getting all the data and like hiring people to call and actually get quotes, who would I sell that to?

On the software pricing?

Yeah.

I think you go to product teams at software companies and say like, you know, or your CRO, Chief Revenue Officers, and say like, hey, like, you know, do you know how you came up with your pricing? Like, you know, and here's what your peers are pricing at and give them like a snippet and give them a taste and be like, hey, we have all this other detail behind, right?

How much would you charge?

Uh, I mean, I don't think you start anything with like CROs at big companies and like you start at, you know, $20,000 to $50,000, right? Like it's easier to go low than to start low and go high.

We just, um, you just handed someone listening a pretty solid idea, right?

That's awesome. Sean, what do you got?

Let's do some non-data nerd ideas. So I'm going to pick a different one.

Do the College Rakens one.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's do the college rankings one. What'd you call it? Broke and busted, broke and busted college rankings. Okay. So what, uh, what's the, what's the insight here?

So I think US News and World Report is sort of like the preeminent college rankings. There's been plenty of coverage about how that's a basic con, right? And like universities do all this sort of finagling to try to get higher in that, you know, I look at how's that work?

How, yeah, they pay or what, what is, what's the problem?

Do you under— like, I don't know about you, Sean, but like, what is— we're talking about some nerdy stuff here, but I, I, I find it like crazy fascinating because it's very clear to see the opportunity here. But what's shocking is like when you say, oh, I'm gonna go get the data. Someone like me, I would be like, well, I gotta go like Google it and like find a database. And you're like, No, I'll just like hire, like I'll use Mechanical Turk, you said earlier, or I'll just hire someone or I'll just like make a ton of phone calls and just doing that stuff, I can get interesting insights. Is, is that really how a lot of this works?

that's a great idea.

Pools in North Jersey, here's what it costs.

So like, yeah, because that's what people Google too, right? Like, you know, pool, pool cost, and then my city, right? That's a, that's a term that people will look for. Or even if they're just looking at pool cost, but you have their, their city in the headline, they're going to click that one over the next one.

And then you go back to the pool people and you're like, hey, listen, I got this pricing. Next time you want to bid, you probably need to know what your competitors are bidding. So like, you can sell the data to both sides, right? Like, but it's definitely like, it's a perfect side hustle. Like, you know, it'd be like a thing that I, you know, I hope my kids will like, just go do this like door-to-door and go get data.

I love how, even though I tried to pick a non-nerdy data one, it actually underneath the hood was a nerdy data one. You're like the, you're a data hammer and the whole world is just little nails that you're just trying to hammer with your, you know, like, but dude, this is the best business there is. You're pouring in the data like a vacuum. You're the data Dyson. That's just taking in this data from everywhere you can.

And do you look at like, for example, the, um, The pool one is a good one because it's probably not— the pricing's not probably changing all the time. Whereas maybe the college one, you got to redo the data collection every year in order for it to be accurate. Like for example, in the content game or the media game, which me and Sam think a lot more about is like, if anybody could do really well with evergreen content, that's so much better than somebody who's doing what we were doing daily, daily emails where it's disposable and you got to recreate the product the next morning. Otherwise there is no product. And so do you think about that when it comes to data, like either the ease of collection or the longevity of the collection, like really makes the idea more valuable versus less?

Okay, I got one that there's no way this can be a data one. A McCormick's spice competitor.

Yeah, I don't— this one I don't have a lot. This is, you know, I think I have a column called Zone of Excellence, and this one's out of my zone of excellence. Uh, McCormick's is like this multi-billion dollar spice company. Oh yeah, if you open up your spice whatever cabinet, like, there's probably like these spices with like a red top, right? Like, that's all McCormick's, right?

$24 billion company.

Wow, that's incredible. In sales?

Market cap.

Wow, public company.

Yeah. So it's just like, like, you know, why isn't there like the— I don't know, the Apple of black pepper? Like, I don't really know how to do this shit, right? But like, like, what's the— what's like—

well, I think for this one you're, you're right. You can go either higher end or you You know, just the more fun look, but just branding, packaging, design, and influencer most importantly. So like, who is the, uh, you know, the whatever, the Martha Stewart of YouTube that you can partner with that can be the face of a brand like this, right? Like who, who has that kind of brand and gravitas that can get into a Target or, uh, or the store shelves at supermarkets, uh, to compete with something like this. And I think that's, that's the way I would go if I was going to do this.

Yeah, 100%. I think the thing that's interesting about this, and I don't know anything about McCormick's, is like the bundling. Like, you know, if you buy salt, you need pepper. If you need pepper, you might be needing oregano, and you might need whatever flakes that they sell out there, right? And so yeah, you could just keep stamping this out across like every spice category. But yeah, this is not one— this is outside of my zone of excellence, so I ain't doing this one, but I like it.

They own everything. I didn't realize this. Have you guys ever Have you ever seen this protein bar at gas stations called Tiger's Milk? No. Have you ever seen—

Is that theirs?

Yes, they own this bar. It's the worst looking— like, it's basically a label. It looks like it was like drawn by Kenny Powers or like— it looks like if Power Rangers ate a protein bar, this is what they would eat. And it's just like— it's called Tiger Milk and it has a face of a tiger and it's like their protein bar. They own that. They own a bunch of different stuff. This is awesome. Yeah, I have— I totally should have, um, oh, they own Frank's RedHot. That's my favorite. So yeah, what a, what a company. I didn't re— I didn't realize that these guys were what they are. That's wild, man. They were created in the 1800s. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, they're just, you know, brand recognition and everybody knows. I mean, if you go to the spice aisle, it's all them. Like they just own the whole thing. Right. So you gotta come up with a distribution hack here, but that's, you know, Sean, that's probably more your world than, than mine, but yeah, for sure.

Can I ask you a quick question different from ideas, but about money? So I'm not gonna, you can say it if you want. I'm gonna assume that you own a, a, a chunk that you are on paper worth mid to high, low to low to high hundreds of millions of dollars. Have you taken any money out of your company or has your only income for the last, I think you said 10 years you've been running this, just been like a, a, a normal mild salary?

Yeah. So I didn't, I didn't pay myself for the first 4 years. So when we raised money, then I basically took my back salary. And then since then, I've not, uh, not taken any money off the table. So yeah, I'm foolishly long or brilliantly long CV Insights. We'll see what, we'll see how things play out. But yeah, I'm all in.

Were you wealthy before you started the company? Like, did you have banker wealth?

So just— no, no, no, no. I just, you know, I got married right before I started the company. I told my wife when we were dating that I don't want to work at a big company anymore, and we're gonna like— there's gonna, there's gonna be some lean times. And so she was down, and so I just saved religiously. Like, we didn't go on vacations with friends, and just like, you know, and it was always like awkward because they're like, oh, do you want to go somewhere? And I'm like, oh, I'm super busy. But because I just was like, no, I don't have money. So yeah, I just Saved like crazy.

I'm busy. I'm busy being poor right now, so I can't go. Sorry. I'll check the calendar when I'm not poor. I'll start going.

I just saved a ton of money and then yeah, for the first like 2 years of CBI, I just paid for a small team out of my pocket and then we started generating revenue.

But wait, why haven't you taken a few million bucks just off the table? Just to make your life a little bit better. It wouldn't, it would have no material output.

Yes. Okay.

And by the way, just so we have numbers, you basically have only made, I imagine middle hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean, I'm— I now get paid like a fair CEO salary, right? So I'm not like— it's not like one of these big public company guys, but like, um, yeah, I think I just— we've been really focused on the business, and like, I just think it's a giant opportunity. And candidly, part of the reason we didn't raise in the beginning was because I don't think I'm good at pitching. And I also worked in venture and I didn't like want to work for my investor, right? Like that was always like a very guiding principle of mine. Like, you know, and I look at S-1s of companies that go public and I'm like, you know, the founder owns like 5%. I'm like, that's just like, that's a backwards calculation. Yeah, probably, you know, should have, could have taken money off over the course of time. Right now would not be a good time to do that given where the markets are. So I figured we'll just keep growing out of this current sort of malaise that we're in. And then, you know, opportunities sort of tend to present themselves. Even our fundraise was like a customer sent us a term sheet over email. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

HubSpot. Grow better.

Tell the story of the, of tell the story of the guy who offered you $100 million via DM. Uh, how did that go?

You know, I get some interesting DMs on Twitter and so somebody offered $100 million. I, you know, I think this guy was broke as a joke, but it was still funny. I said, uh, you know, not interested, not looking to sell. And I think then the, email chain kind of devolved from there where he was like, you know, I'm going to build a competitor and put you out of business. And yeah, it was good. His name? I don't recall. I don't recall. It was like some—

You blurred it out of the thing.

I blurred it out.

Yeah. So he sends this DM. You posted the DM screenshots. It starts like, hey, here's who I am, really interested, you know, in partnering or an acquisition. Let's talk, please call me. And then you were like, Thanks. Yeah. Not even thanks. THX, right? Just like the short thanks. Um, not for sale.

Nice.

And he goes, and then he goes, how about a partnership? And then he just keeps going and he's like, here's, how about this? I'll give you $100 million for the business. You are now, your fiduciary responsibilities is you have to present this to your board. You know, um, you know that let's go. And then you go, You go, okay, interesting strategy. Uh, best of luck. And he goes, so do you accept the offer? And then he, then he devolves into, all right, then I'm going to create a competitor. Have you seen this competitor launch? Is he, uh, is he eating your lunch yet or what? Surprise, surprise.

We're yeah, we're tracking religiously to see when this launches, but yeah, nothing yet.

You should DM him back, be like, hey, how's it going, man? Uh, curious about the launch details.

Yeah, yeah, that was, that was atypical. I think most of my, my DMs are, are nice, but yeah, that one was a little, a little out there.

What would you do with the money now if you sold?

Um, I mean, I think the thing I'd do is I want to build a school of entrepreneuring. Like, I think education is broken, uh, and so I think like kids should just learn how to build businesses and not go to college. And so that's what I do. And I think there's a bunch of colleges that are struggling that I could go buy, like, a I plot and build like a dope campus for, for a bunch of like high-achieving kids and we'll just like go figure out—

How, how much would that take?

I have no idea. I have no idea.

This is like— But you'll have it.

This is my distant dream. But yeah, I, I think like, uh, I just read a, a great book called The Case Against Education, uh, that kind of breaks this down and it's really interesting. And, uh, yeah, I think it's like, I think there's an interesting thing to be done there and, uh, And then yeah, I'd love to like do some stuff in India along that lines. But yeah, this will be my last true startup.

And, um, I'm like, is there like a marketplace for that? Is there a Zillow for bankrupt universities?

Uh, there should be, but there's, uh, there's one website called DealStream that happens to have most of them that I see. Um, so DealStream will send me emails of one, like, you know, multi-campus beauty school, here you go. Um, you know, that just got this email 2 days ago.

What made you sour on this idea, Sean?

Uh, just like the lifestyle component. I was like, would I like, would I want to actually, if I was going to do this, it was like, okay, I'm going to basically go be the dean of the school and I'm going to like, basically this will be my baby and I will make this great. And I was like, oh, it's a lot easier to just like have a business I could just do on my phone and my laptop, you know, 4 hours a day and not worry about this and just hang out with my kids and, and, you know, have fun. And so I was like, okay, yeah, there's an all-in version of entrepreneurship that I'm no longer like super interested in because that would require, um, you know, same thing. Like I'd rather do this podcast than go speak at events. I think in the last 3 years I got invited to speak at maybe 150 events and I've said yes to 2 of them, right? Like, you know, so it's like you could make good money and grow your audience doing this, but nah. Seems like a lot of work. You know, I think I'll try to just win the way I want.

Sean, have you ever, um, have you read the blog post that Anand made years ago about, I think your father or someone in your family got sick and they couldn't run their factory in India anymore and you had to go. Did you have to run the factory?

How is it right now? His dad.

Yeah. My father passed away in April 2017. And so he had a chemical business in India and, uh, Yeah. You know, like he'd built it over many years and, and like, I was like, all right, I can't just let it go to zero. So I ran it while I was running CBI for about 18 months.

The title of the blog post is How to Manage and Sell a Company in an Industry and a Company and a Country You Don't Know. And it's kind of great. It's like a full, like full-length sort of like, here's the whole thing. Do you want to tell like the short version of the story and then people can go read the blog?

Yeah, I mean, so, uh, he died on April 17th, 2017, and as we're going to cremate him— we're Hindu— and, uh, this worker from the factory comes up to me in Hindi. My Hindi is pretty weak, but I understand it. And the worker was basically like, in, you know, what's going to happen to us, right? And I was like, you know, I'm like a mess, but I was like, all right, I guess like there is this thing. And my mom and him basically built this business over 20 years, you know, kind of like a small chemical company, like nothing.

What's that mean?

Gargantuan, uh, in terms of size.

No, or chemical. What's a chemical?

Oh, it was like a, it was, um, it was, it's in a sector called fine chemicals. So it was a raw material that goes into perfumes and like, uh, flavors and fragrances. Right. And so he'd built it, one of 3 manufacturers in the world that could make this product. It was a really finicky product. Um, and like, I'm like, all right, I guess I gotta run this. And like, my dad was like a mad scientist, like off the charts smart. And I'm like, I'm not that right. And so. So I'm like, okay, what do I do here? Like, I don't— if something goes wrong in the factory, I can't help. So the only thing I can do is probably try to bring in more business. So I just went online and like cold called every large chemical company that's in this space. And I was like, hey, we make this product. If you ever need it, like, come, you know, come talk to us. So we had like our best couple of quarters ever when I was running it.

And because you were doing outbound and he wasn't doing any, or he just wasn't doing it well.

My dad was just like, he was a— he was like a product guy. So he's like, the best product will win, right?

And like, put this, put this picture up on the YouTube channel of the blog post where it's the side of the building, it looks like. And it just says on one side, good quality. And then there's a giant equal sign and then it just says good business. And that's like, it looks like as is that the side of the building as you approach to walk in, it's just like, hey, reminder.

I was entering the factory.

Yeah.

Good quality equals good business. In like Times New Roman font.

Oh my gosh, this is awesome.

And then like, you know, it'd be a fucking tycoon.

Yeah, well, I mean, for, you know, and then I was like telling my wife, I was like, yo, we got to have more kids because like if we want to build, you gotta like, you gotta have a lot of kids. To like take this, take all these, uh, these arms of this industrial conglomerate up. And she's like, you're insane. And then, uh, and then yeah, like 10 weeks here or 6 weeks here, 10 days in India. Like, I mean, yeah, like that was brutal. So then I was just like, all right, I got to sell this. And then was fortunate to sell it and the team's still all there and yeah, everything worked out.

So what did you sell it for?

Uh, I can't disclose.

A good, I mean, like a good amount.

Yeah, it was, it was, you know, I wasn't optimizing for the dollars. I was optimizing for a clean deal to a person who would not fire everybody that my dad built the business with. So, you know, so I'm sure I could have gone to somebody else who'd have like torn it down and, you know, done other things with it. But I felt really good about these guys. So yeah, I think it like it achieved non-financial objectives that I think were more important to my mom and to me than Maybe the financial objectives.

This is a really, really good blog post that you have, and it kind of got lost over the years. You guys got to share this again more.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, uh, yeah, it was, you know, the team at CBI, I got to give them credit. Like, I mean, I was kind of an absentee CEO for a little bit and they like kept the trains running on time. So yeah, it was, it was a, it was a good, a good thing to accomplish. I was glad to get it.

You had some like takeaways on the M&A process. Uh, I'm curious. I'll just read the headlines, but you can decide which one of these you think you have a strong strong point of view on, or strong message to deliver here. So you said, should I have hired an investment bank? And you're like, I didn't have one. I represented myself. Maybe I should have. Uh, you said don't let lawyers run the process. So lawyers are often trying to mitigate risk, but it's easy to just like have everybody get entrenched in like, you know, risk management and not actually have the deal go through. Uh, don't sweat the small stuff. Uh, quote, the industry standard is a phrase to watch out for. So give me your thoughts on one of these.

The industry standard one, I think is like the one that like I hate because like people only use that when they can't justify the term. They just say like, oh no, no, but that's just industry standard, how we do things.

We always do things that way.

Can we, um, one thing happened over the weekend, Sean, that you and I had talked about, and I actually think it's a good time to talk about it now because I have a feeling that Anand's going to know a little bit about it. Do you remember, uh, probably 2 months ago we talked about this guy named Gautam Adani, I think his name is. You know what I'm talking about? You were like, I mean, you're not to blame. We were just using the news and you were like, this guy's amazing. Look at what he's doing. He kind of looks like an Indian Mario guy and he's like doing all this cool stuff where he's like, doesn't really care about looking cool and he gives his money away, yada, yada, yada. And now he's like the third or first richest man in the world.

The news was, I think he had gotten to second or third richest man in the world, and I didn't think most people knew his name. I said, hey, there's this guy Adani, here's what he does. And I think we even said it, I don't remember really saying this, but a lot of people DM being like, you guys called it, because news came out that there's like some fraud going on or whatever with their company. And I guess we had said something that was like, you know, either this is just amazing or You know, you never know because of whatever. I, we have to go back and listen. I'm not sure what the, what the clip was, but a lot of people like, you guys called that, which—

yeah, people were saying that too. And I'm like, I said thanks, but I don't actually remember.

I don't, I don't remember calling that. I do remember when I was reading about it was a lot of people were like, hey, this is kind of a shell game. Like, he's basically raising money, he's raising money in one company using the, like, basically borrowing against another company that he owns, and that company's borrowed against another company that he owns. And he had like so many entities that were each sort of like, um, the justification for the next, uh, in terms of either the valuation or borrowing money or whatever it was. I don't— I mean, this is a couple months ago. I don't remember what the details were, but I think we just said that as a footnote. It's not like we were calling him out on anything. I think people are giving us a little more credit than we deserved on that one. So, uh, sorry to interrupt you, Sam.

So yeah, so that's the back— that's the background. So, uh, I think on Friday Hindenburg Research— I think they're a short seller, so they, they short companies. But they produce scathing reports and they've done this a dozen times. I can't— I'm sure, Anand, you probably know some of their examples, but they're just like known for these really good reports. Well, they'll write and say, this company we think is total bullshit, here's why. And then it tanks. And obviously they are financially incentivized to— for it to tank. But as far as I'm concerned, I think some of the research is actually kind of spot on sometimes and they have like a good track record. But, uh, Anand, have you followed this?

I followed it a little bit. I mean, I like Hindenburg because I think like there's like— we live in like the age of grifters, and so like you need people. And I don't know if Adani is, but I think like you need people like Hindenburg who like, you know, or Coffeezilla or like Wendover Productions or any of these folks that are out there even on YouTube who are trying to hold and at least shine a light on some of the griftiness that's out there. And so I, you know, I like what they do in at a high level. I don't know if their case with Adani is like a good one or a bad one, but yeah.

Yeah, well, basically they said like the entire company, like there's a bunch of weird things going on with it. Of all the, like he, they list all these companies and each person that runs one of the companies is one of his like relatives or former executives. So it's all like kind of like, it's kind of like his cronies are kind of like running everything. And yeah, he's like loaning money from other companies that he owns and he's making the valuations of each of those companies really high. And so it turns out it's basically like, a little FTX-esque where, uh, of just like similar or entities that he owns loaning money to other entities with the collateral being a company that he values himself, among other things. And so anyway, I thought you guys would have like an interesting take on this because I don't know, you had, you had spent a little time in India, you're in the finance world. So I wasn't sure if you, if you had an opinion there.

So have you been able to capture or like catch any scams just or like make any right predictions based off the data that you guys have?

Yeah, I mean, we don't, we don't publish that stuff. We usually send it to media, right? Because we're not like a media outlet, but we'll find stuff where we're like, you know, This company raised at— I'm not going to name, but there was a company recently that raised like at a $4 billion valuation. And then when you looked at like the founders and you looked at like the number of employees and everything, it was like, something's off here, right? And so, you know, and so like we would send it to somebody and say like, hey, like this looks odd. Like you should go do what journalists do and dig into it. So we'll find stuff that's a little odd at times. And then, you know, I think the more interesting thing sometimes is like you'll dig into filings of companies after they've been acquired by a public company. And you see, it's not— this isn't like a scam or anything, but you see like, you know, hot company that says they got acquired, and then you actually see how much the public company paid for them. And it's like, you know, 1/8 of what they raised, right? And so like, you just sort of get— it shines a light on like what was a real success versus what isn't. I think that's probably what we tend to see more, you know, people who are want to do fraud or like if they're good, they're hard to catch, period. Right? Like it's just not something that— and it's not where we spend our time.

Wow.

He's amazing. The same thing happened at FTX. I remember when we, we did, we were, uh, they were sponsoring us for something and the guy who was paying us, um, was their head of strategy. And we, you know, I didn't go on the call, but I asked Ben later, I was like, so was he like, you know, super sharp or what was that guy's story? He goes, yeah, he's 24, he's 23 years old or 24 years old and he started as whatever and now he's promoted. He's like the, he's the head of strategy for all of FTX. And again, it was like, wow, that's crazy. I guess they're just a real meritocracy around there and they just, you know, it's a land of equal opportunity and this guy just proved his worth, or it's like, no, this is his college buddy. He's not going to ask too many questions and he can just trust him to do whatever and say whatever, right? Like these things from the outside. I remember reading articles about this wonder kid and, uh, and then later it's like a bad thing.

And you were right about the CFO thing with Tesla at that time. Weren't they on the brink?

Well, people don't talk about that much now, but it did seem like they were on the brink or, you know, just, you know, narrowly survived either either properly or improperly, I'm not sure. But like later, I remember one, one, uh, interview Elon finally admitted it. He, he was like, we were 6 weeks away from like, you know, the show being over for Tesla when they were having the Model 3 production ramp. And, uh, and he had said something in a separate interview that alarmed me as well, which was about, um, there was like some— what's that famous like green clean energy thing that Obama funded, like like the Green New Deal or something? No, it was like $600 million to Soivera, Soylent, Soi-whatever. I don't know. Some kind of Soylagen. I don't know what it was. Some company that got a bunch of money and it failed. And like up until the day they declared bankruptcy, it was like, we're, we're good. I don't know what you guys are talking about. And Solyndra, that's exactly right. And they asked Elon about that. Like, you know, does clean energy get a bad rap because of the, you know, the problems with Solyndra and others? People say it's hard to make new tech work and all this stuff. And he said something in a separate interview where he was like, what are they supposed to say? As soon as they— if they ever admitted any weakness, the stock would tank and it would guarantee their demise. Like, they have to say it's all good, you guys are nuts, whether they are or aren't, because the other one is, is it, it, it will tank their stock and they will die for sure. It'll accelerate their death. So then I was like, well, you can't believe anything this guy says about how Tesla's doing. If that's his mentality, when they're, you know, I'm reading these things about how they might be on the brink, he's saying they're all fine, but he even says that that's the CEO's job in this situation. So now, you know what to do. And that's a long story short about why I sold my Tesla stock too early.

Yeah. I do think like there's the signal that I look for. It's not in the data is like the narrative when it's like a crazy founder narrative, like, uh, like they were in Southeast Asia living in a monastery and they talk about like their clothing choices. Like, that's always a weird one, right? When it's like, we're not going to talk about the business, we're going to talk about celebrity wear, some like moleskin t-shirt made from like, you know, but it worked with Zuck. Yeah, but he wasn't like— he built the product to start. He wasn't known for his like weird—

I think it's the key thing when you can't see the product or the, or the financials, right? Like, like for a lot of these things where it's like, is the product legit and is— are the financials like visible, right? But, but even then you can't, like, you know, FTX was a, like a real product that, that people used and the financials made sense at the time that like, they were obviously going to, they're making money on every trade, right? People doing a lot of crypto trading. How can they not make money? Um, you know, it seemed like it would work in both cases. Another example on the FTX side, they had 25 engineers and I remember reading stories about how He was just like, yeah, we create, like, we're not like these Silicon Valley companies with all this bloat. Coinbase has like, you know, thousands of employees. We have an engineering team of 25 and we do more volume than them because we hire 10x engineers and we go for extreme operational leverage. And later it was like, of course these guys had like terrible security practices and all this stuff. Like they didn't even have the, they refused to even invest in engineering. Right. It's like the same story, the two sides of the same story. Once you, once you know the result.

What's a company that's impressed you that most people don't talk about? Because you guys see a bunch of companies that are interesting. What's a company that kind of flies under the radar but kind of secretly crushes it?

I'm like a data— It's probably going to end up in the data world. So let me think about it. That's all right. I don't know if anybody— I will say, like, the area that I like right now, and I don't think these are great businesses, but I think, like, I think are interesting, is like the, the folks that are, uh, analyzing the grifters, right? Like, I really, like, love this space because I think there's something to be built here. Like, they're more media companies than they are great big tech companies. Um, But there was like, there's a couple that like are digging into like pastors and like the whole like evangelical pastor world and like it's phenomenal, like the stuff that they do. So like that's probably the area I go down a lot more in. And then like looking at the businesses of folks like Andrew Schultz and folks like that, like, you know, because I think there's a lot to learn from how they do marketing and how they build audience. So I tend to look at businesses that I think we can learn from versus like just like random sort of businesses that are out there.

What, what can a boring company like yours learn from Andrew Schultz?

So the thing that— so I think the thing that he's done really—

but I, I was purposely insulting you in order to, uh, make, make the average listener be like, oh yeah, I'm not that cool.

I think the thing that he does really well is he doesn't just interview other comedians, right? I think he like, he interviews other people who are kind of adjacent to him, right? And so what he does then is he keeps expanding his audience. And I think most other folks, like, you know, like, I like Theo Von, and Theo Von's like interviewing other comedians, right? But like, he interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I bet you that brought him a whole bunch of new people, right?

And so I think that it was very funny.

Well, dude, I appreciate you doing this. You're fun to talk to. Sean, what do you think?

We only got through maybe half of the, half of the shortlist ideas. So, uh, if people like this, we should do a part 2 and, uh, and do more, do more of the ideas. Thanks for coming on, man. This is fun. And, uh, appreciate, you know, that you've been, you know, come— I feel like I've seen you tweet about the show, you know, for a while now. So, you know, that's, I really appreciate that. That's one of the cool moments of this, doing this for us, is that people we respect, if they like our stuff too, that gives you a little extra juice, a little extra wind in your sails to, uh, to go out and keep going. Cause it's, it's different than just, oh, the numbers are going up, but numbers don't have that same kind of like pull as, you know, um, somebody who you think is cool, you know, liking your stuff.

And by the way, Adnan, it's your fault. It's kind of my fault. It's most— it's part your fault. Basically, I get like lots of messages a day, but like 5 of them a day, it's usually a young man in his 20s and he'll just message me and he'll say, let's fuck. That's all I get. And the reason being, one time I was either on my way home or en route to the airport and I was— I hate flying, so I take a lot of Xanax. And so that's the only time I'm ever inebriated. And I was very high and I messaged you and I said, I'm in your hood, let's fuck. And you replied like, I'm down. Like, here's a restaurant, meet me there or something like that. And I told that story. And, uh, now because of that, I get, I get a bunch of men messaging me that, uh, living, living the dream, Sam, you're living the dream. Someone's dream. Someone's dream. Not my dream, but someone's dream. Yeah, I'm living— I'm living a person's dream. So, uh, you're to blame for that, but I appreciate you coming on, and, uh, this is fun. We'll talk soon.

All right, thanks guys.