EPISODE
418

The Boys React: Facebook Stock Surges, Jack Butcher's NFT Makes Millions & Moonwalker Shoes

Feb 10, 2023·22:00·Sam & Shaan·with Ben Wilson·Listen·AppleSpotify
0:0011:0022:00
12 moments · 102 paragraphs · synced to the second
SHAAN

Called the broker up. I said, Griffin, buy. He said, buy what? I said, you know what to buy. Buy Zuck. He says, how do you spell that? I said, Z-U-C-K. He said, that's not the ticker. I said, Griffin, call Zuck and tell him I want some shares. And so we bought some shares, and I think we're up double from where we bought.

It's Friday. We're reacting to the news. Uh, welcome fellas. Uh, let's go through the stories. First of all, Facebook stock is soaring. It's up 43% in the last month. Uh, Sully's getting rich off of it. Fellas, did you call it? Did you know that Facebook was going to rebound?

SAM

Right now, Facebook, like I, I haven't bought ads on it recently, Sean, but I was talking to some of my folks who worked with you on the Milk Row. And I was talking to some of the people who worked at HubSpot. Who are the people who worked on The Hustle at HubSpot, Facebook ads are killing it. They seem like they're working really nicely. Like when I was running it, it was like, you know, we were acquiring users for like $3 or $4. And then nowadays it's back down to like $1.50 when we first started. So it's kind of easy to see, I guess. What about you?

SHAAN

Uh, yeah, I, I bet on it. So I took, uh, I don't know, $250,000, dollars, like, I don't know, 3 or 4 months ago. And I bought Meta because I was like, why is everybody down on Meta? And I was like, did they forget the number one rule? You don't bet against Zuck. And, um, like, you know, to anybody who's like, oh, but the, you know, the metaverse, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I just send them the video clip of Mark Zuckerberg doing MMA. And I'm like, this is who you're trying to bet against. The guy that since age 18 has just been like dominating everything he's tried to do. The guy who's created the biggest social network ever, then bought all of his competitors and killed, you know, every, everybody else who tried to compete with him, including Google, uh, when they tried to compete with him on social. And now he trains MMA. And before that, he learned to hunt and speak Chinese fluently. You think this guy's just gonna lose money because Apple changed their cookie policy or whatever? Get outta here with that. No way. And so, Called the broker up. I said, Griffin, buy. He said, buy what? I said, you know what to buy. Buy Zuck. He says, how do you spell that? I said, Z-U-C-K. He said, that's not the ticker. I said, Griffin, call Zuck and tell him I want some shares. And so we bought some shares and I think we're up double from where we bought. I don't know where, I don't know exactly. I think it's 80.

SAM

I'm up 80% on that, that Sean and I use the same guy, by the way. We both use Griffin. What did Griffin say?

SHAAN

Let me actually check the number so I don't misquote myself here.

SAM

Did he say, are you sure, Sean? Or does he go, yes sir, go and do it?

SHAAN

Well, he texted me the other day. He goes, great call on Meta. And I go, thank you for the compliment because I've lost a lot of money this year. And he goes, that's why I sent this. Okay, not quite double, but, uh, but close. Um, we're having a good— we will be double. So we're up 50— only, only 50%. So it's a little bit, a little bit less than I thought. 50% still, still not bad in a couple months.

SAM

Dude, Sarah started working at— Sarah used to work at Facebook in 2012, and I was like doing some math about what she would have— yeah, 2012 she started— or sorry, '14 she started working there, and I was doing the math on like where she would be if if she just stayed there. And we were talking about it, and I was like, well, pro, you would have gotten fairly wealthy. Con, like, her job there was like, how do I make like a sticker emoji that gets people in Brazil to share more selfies? So it's like, you know, you want to like— you're going to want to like kill yourself, and this is whack and lame, but like, they pay for your lunch and you get your— you get our oil change, and like, that's Stock back then was only $47. At its peak was $372. I mean, that's pretty sick, but yeah, man, like Facebook's killer. Never bet against them.

SHAAN

Dude, when we were going through our sale process, Facebook was one of the potential buyers.

SAM

They offered a crazy deal.

SHAAN

Uh, no, no, this was 2019, 2020, something like that. 19.

SAM

Okay. So back then it was $200.

SHAAN

Yeah. So we, so it's, it's good that the stock is down from when we would have got acquired because it was, you know, stock was a a significant part of the deal. But, um, we were the, the difference of talent quality between— we interviewed with, uh, we talked to YouTube, we talked to Twitch where we ended up going, to Facebook, to Discord, to a bunch of other players. And Facebook was so much more, so much better, so much more impressive. I was like, um, okay, you know, like if I was just going off of Who, what talent would we be around? It's not even close. Like the numbers are not even like the math of the difference of these offers. It's not even close, but I was optimizing a lot of the things.

SAM

A lot of people who I've, who I've talked with who work at Facebook, they're sharp as hell. Like, um, I remember just walking around that campus. It felt like I was at the UN, you know what I mean? Like there's like, like there's so many different like types of like colors and like ethnicities. It was like, they just like cherry-picked the best of all over the world. And it was at that, what was it, Menlo Park or I forget where it was, but like walking around that campus, I feel inspired.

SHAAN

One of the guys who would have been reporting to me there, he was like, yeah, as my, um, like intro, like when you get there, you do like a demo project or you do like an intro project, I guess, if you're early on as an engineer or product manager or something like that, um, to like just get onboarded, you do like a hackathon project. And he created basically Facebook Marketplace in that. And I ended up running that for, like working on that. But it was like, you know, his prototype was like one of the original genesis things.. And then another guy was like, uh, I was like, what'd you do before this? He's like, oh, I was at Microsoft. I was like, oh, okay. One boring thing to another. Great. And he's like, uh, he's like, yeah, I invented, uh, the, the, you know, Microsoft 365. Like, uh, you know, I was like, we should go to the cloud and make this a subscription. And nobody agreed with me and I just kept working on it for like 2 years. And, um, he's like, I just literally had a separate machine under my desk where I was like, I'm gonna build it on this machine and like, I'm gonna do it here. And I was like, Okay. So my takeaway was like, you guys are smart, man. If I come here, I'm going to have to work. Uh, I'm going to have to work hard because you can't just like be lazy around these people.

SAM

They're great. Um, all right. Which one, uh, which one am I going to go to now?

Let's go Jack Butcher. Uh, Jack Butcher's NFT project, which is, uh, called Checks V4. It's a bunch of art around, uh, the checkmark has, uh, recently become the top trading NFT project by volume, uh, surpassing Bored Apes.

SAM

Wow, I didn't realize it was that big.

SHAAN

I think that's probably like on a this-week type basis.

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, not all time in terms of like active trading volume, uh, either this week or, uh, in a single day. Um, but, uh, what do you guys have to say to our boy?

SHAAN

My buddy Jack's getting rich.

SAM

Love it, dude. So I'm biased. Jack's like a close family friend. Him and his wife Um, are very, I'm very close with those folks. They're awesome. And Jack is more of an artist.

SHAAN

Close enough that he sent you some of these NFTs.

SAM

Oof. Well, I got a t-shirt that says internet on it that I, you sent me a 30% coupon code. Um, I got a t-shirt, Jack, uh, Jack's punk rock, man. Jack's more of an artist than he is a businessman. And, um, if you go to his website, Visualize Value and you read the copy for the checkmark, it is, as we like to say, beautifully done. Uh, it's, it's like, it's, it's just an NFT, but it's just so tasteful. It's classy. Uh, it's delightful. No, he's done a good job, man. I think it's cool. I still, I'm not, I'm not an NFT guy, you know, cornrows, neck tattoos, NFTs, not for me. Uh, but cool that other people have them. And that's kind of how I feel about an NFT still. But if I were going to do an NFT, it'd be his.

Yeah.

SHAAN

It looks like last 7 days has done $15 million in sales volume. No shit. And, uh, it's the 4th ranked one in the last 7 days, maybe. So really impressive. Uh, it's just a checkmark, right? Don't say it like that. Like, is Nike just a swoosh?

SAM

Look, I'm not saying it that way. Uh, what is it? I didn't actually— is it like a, you get a different color and you put that as your— no, I'm not disrespecting it at all, but I'm wondering, I'm asking, uh, cause I'm not, I'm not in this world.

SHAAN

It went from $8, which was the price that Elon was trying to charge for a blue check on Twitter. Right. So that's like the state, the political statement he's making here. So it went from $8, which was his like opening price, I think, to closer to $4,000 per, per NFT now. So Incredible, incredible surge. Um, and he is like, I don't know, he's not there yet. This is sort of like comparing, is a little bit of a stretch of a comparison, but he's kind of like an internet Banksy a little bit. Like, he does cool shit that's like, it's a commentary on what's going on in the world, and he just, the guy just hits. He just hits. Like, I, have I seen him do anything that I'm not like, that's, that's dope? HO, Hits Only, and he's one of the few people who has HO status.

SAM

Dude, he makes hits. He, uh, so he started out, so Jack's our good buddy. If you don't know Jack, follow him on Twitter. He started out, uh, he had an ad agency and then he, uh, or he worked at an ad agency and then he started to make his own ad agency and it was going okay. And then he created this course called Build Once, Sell Twice, which is hilarious.

SHAAN

Awesome. Amazing name.

SAM

Yeah. Amazing name. And it's about how to productize a service and he starts selling that course. And he basically was like, I remember I did a call with him and his wife one time when we first started getting to know one another and they were in like a 400 or 500 square foot studio apartment that they lived in and they weren't like killing it. And then like he had the year of his life in 2020 or 2021, kills it. Now if you go to his website, visualizevalue.com, the reason why I love him is you see like his background and you see his courses, but he also has this tab called visuals where you can like look at some of his artwork, but then he has a merch store and his merch store is actually awesome. He has these sweatshirts that say college, kind of like, you know, that, but it says internet and like, he just does things like that that are actually awesome. And it, like, when I go to his site, I'm like, oh, I'm like this dorky internet guy too, but he has merch. I'm inspired to be, uh, like a lot cooler. Like he is, it's awesome. He's, he's badass. I'm a big Jack fan.

SHAAN

Me too. Me too. We're, we're, we're big fans of him.

SAM

All right.

SHAAN

What's up?

SAM

All right.

Next up we got Moonwalkers. It's a new shoe that's like half a roller skate. I don't know if you guys had a chance to open up and look at it yet, but it allows you to walk and you just walk, but you go 7 miles an hour, which is roughly 3 times as fast as a normal person walks. It's, it's on Kickstarter. It's raised $300,000. The shoes cost more than $1,000. Are you guys—

SAM

God, you got to see the video. These are so stupid and so awesome. They're basically just Heelys for dorks who work at a startup.

SHAAN

Uh, like Heelys for people with no balance.

SAM

Yeah, this is— which, this is crazy. This video is hilarious. Uh, it's really dumb, but kind of awesome.

SHAAN

If we did an award for person most likely to have started this that I know, Sam, I think you would have been the guy. Me?

SAM

Dude, this is like— The snuggie of shoes.

SHAAN

Tell me how you feel about Boosted Boards.

SAM

Well, Boosted Boards are dope, right?

SHAAN

It's the same thing.

SAM

It's a 25-mile-an-hour skateboard.

SHAAN

One for each foot, dude.

SAM

Oh my God. This is, this is like, this is like driving a Kia, man. You're never going to get laid again if you ever like get caught in one of these.

SHAAN

Hey, hey, I like Kias. Um, my—

SAM

Bro, you have a BMW for a reason.

SHAAN

I saw this on, um, TikTok and it had millions of likes. I think it had like 2 or 3 million likes on this video. And I was like, I could see why it is, uh, gonna be controversial. It is like visually stunning. You can't tell if it's a joke or if it's serious. Uh, like this literally looks like the TikTok and the ad for it literally looks like something from Silicon Valley, the HBO show. Um, like the, the guy, the founder, he's like this guy's, you know, Shunji, and he's like this Asian guy who's talking about like, you know, As humans, we've, we've always been stuck at 2 miles an hour and finally we've broken the barrier. We go 7 now. He's sitting in front of like these 3 screens, like these huge MacBook screens of my iMac screens. Like, dude, what are you programming? Like, it's a shoe. It's roller skates. It's kind of like roller skates.

SAM

It's going to revolutionize the way that people get hit by cars. That's what this is going to do. Uh, it just, We're changing the world.

SHAAN

You go, if you look at the Kickstarter backers, the Kickstarter backers are only personal injury lawyers who are like, oh yeah, no brainer. Business expense, write this one off.

SAM

Dude, this is just Segway 2.0. It's really stupid, but also kind of cool. Um, yeah, I just, uh, I mean, this is like, uh, this is like guys who wear like their cell phones outside of their pocket or who wear a Jawbone 24/7. Um, it's, this is that niche. Uh, not for me.

SHAAN

I'll give it the Andrew Tate, I'm out.

SAM

Yeah, I'm out.

SHAAN

This data is wrong every freaking time.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

SAM

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

SHAAN

Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed.

SAM

HubSpot, grow better. Let's do one more. What's the, you wanna do the tooth fairy thing?

SHAAN

Yeah. Okay. I got a news story for you. Uh, my sister has 3 daughters, um, 2 of which are losing their baby teeth. And, um, I was talking to my niece the other day and she tells me that, uh, she lost a tooth. I said, wow, fantastic. You gonna give it to the, you put it under your pillow for the tooth fairy? No, I threw it away. You threw it away? You threw it in the garbage can? Yeah, I threw it away. Why? Well, my last tooth was under there for 2 months and the tooth fairy never came. So, um, so I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to even try anymore. Uh, that's the first, first story I hear. And I'm looking at my sister. She's like making eye contact. Like, I'll tell you later. I'm sorry. I know. I know. I fucked up. Then the younger daughter loses her tooth yesterday, puts it under, uh, her pillow with a note. Here's what the note says. It's, uh, I'll, I'll send you a picture of it, but basically it says something to the effect of, uh, um, dear Tooth Fairy, um, you didn't come last night, but that's okay. I, uh, I'm leaving it here again. And it says something like, you don't have to leave any money. Just draw a picture of yourself. I wanna see what you look like. And then that's the note. And she didn't do anything again. So the news, the, the question, fellas, Does my sister need to just check herself into jail for bad mom of the year?

SAM

What the hell? What's your deal? What's— just give like a few dollars or like, you know, like some Doritos or something. Just put a little something on the side.

SHAAN

She forgot.

SAM

How do you forget that?

SHAAN

Unbelievable. She texted me. She said that herself. She goes, should I just send myself to jail because I'm such a bad mom?

SAM

That's crazy to me.

SHAAN

That's my news story of the week. That's what I pay attention to.

SAM

What's a tooth go for nowadays? $5?

SHAAN

I don't know, dude. Back in my day, that was, you know, like $5 or like, if your parents get cheeky, they're like, here's a $2 bill. Yeah, it's less than the going rate, but it's rare. It's a $2 bill.

SAM

You know, like I got a $5 once, uh, and that was like a huge deal. I don't know. What's a tooth go for?

SHAAN

I feel like people do more of that. Ben, what were you, did you get tooth money when you were growing up?

I got a quarter. I don't feel like I grew up poor, but now I feel like I grew up poor.

SAM

Yeah, I would get like a quarter or a dollar, but then one time I got a tooth knocked out and I got $5 for it.

SHAAN

That's some guilt money right there.

SAM

That it was guilt money.

SHAAN

Yeah, blood money.

SAM

I fell and got it knocked out, so I got $5 for that one, but I don't know what a tooth would go for now.

SHAAN

Um, Ben, do this, uh, do this other one you have, the Snowden one. I don't know if you've seen this one.

Yeah, so Edward Snowden goes live on a conference And, uh, the conference is, um, I don't know, it just screams like, uh, fake Zoom conference, right?

SAM

The— let's see what it's called.

SHAAN

It's called, uh, Private Investor Conference or something like that. The most generic name of all time.

SHAAN

Uh, he got paid to come do a keynote. He starts his like, you know, keynote Q&A or whatever and just screen shares instead the news article that this guy who's hosting this event is a former, like, you know, Ponzi schemer that was like, you know, got in trouble for that. And the chat is just like, wow, wow, boom, wow. Oh my God. Wow. It's the best. Like, uh, you know, I don't want to go to many webinars, but I wish I was at this one. Shout out to Edward Snowden. You know, whistleblower's going to blow, dude.

SAM

I'm watching this.

SHAAN

Yeah.

SAM

He went for it. Have you ever seen the subreddit? It's on the subreddit called Watch People Die.

SHAAN

Uh, yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah. This is going to be on the top.

SAM

Sorry. I screwed that up. Watch people die inside.

SHAAN

Yeah.

SAM

Yeah. Inside. Whoops. Yeah. The inside's a big thing. Uh, next to, uh, there's a subreddit called Absolute Units. Have you seen that one? I love that one. Just like a buff dog or like a pimple that's huge.

SHAAN

It's called like a cucumber that's like just too strong to be cut.

SAM

Yeah. I love Absolute Units. Units, but I subscribe to Absolute Units and I subscribe to Watch People Die Inside. This is one of them. This video is on there.

SHAAN

Well, do you see the reaction? Watch the guy's reaction. So the guy goes, yes, that's me. And then Snowden's like, well, I think people should know, you know, who they're getting into business with or whatever. So I don't feel good about this. I'm not doing this. So he leaves and then the guy doesn't know what to do and he just shrinks and he just goes, Um, okay. I'm gonna, we're gonna take a break and, um, yeah, I'm going to come back and he just doesn't know what to say. It's like, man, if there was ever a time to be like, hey, um, you know, I know that looked bad, but, um, happy to explain and, uh, you know, explain what happened and, and, you know, clarify for everybody. You know, I can do that right here, right now. No problem.

SAM

Dude. And there's people like, he shrinks. There's people in the chat saying like, hey Edward, are flying saucers real? Like, and people on Reddit are like, yeah, no wonder why these people fall for this, uh, this guy's private investor club. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is crazy. Yeah. This is a good video. I'm going to have to watch this. Um, dude, I've been following some of these like Ponzi scheme guys on, um, like they do all these, like, um, for example, there was one, what's that? There's a Twitch guy with dreadlocks. He's a black dude, not, uh, the famous one who boxes, but like another one who's like more hated., and, uh, he's like loud and cocky. I forget his name, but, um, very punchable guy. Um, but he was like, uh, uh, uh, a crypto company like paid him to do like an ad and they're in the background talking about, and he forgets that he's recording and he's like, dude, I can't believe people are going to buy this crap or something like that. You know what I'm talking about? What's that guy's name? Very hateable guy.

SHAAN

I don't know. I don't know who that guy is, but I've seen the clip and yeah, like the, the owner or the promoter of the thing was behind him and they're, they're talking. I don't know what exactly what he said. I don't think he said that. He said something else, but it was something something like, I don't want to produce crap anymore.

Yeah.

SHAAN

The Hot Mike picked it up and people were like, wow, dude, disgusting.

SAM

The, the, the amount of like the, the Twitch and I think I said Twilio. I meant Twitch, the Twitch and like YouTube audience that buys this crap. It is crazy, man. It is absolutely crazy to me. Um, I can't believe people do that, but yeah, this was a good one. How did this guy afford Edward Snowden?

SAM

That's crazy to me. It's the, it's the Private Investment Club. It's the largest, largest real estate club in Canada. That's like his shtick. That's crazy to me. Anyway. Yeah, that's a good video. I'm going to have to watch that.

SHAAN

All right. That's it. We're out of here. Boys React.