EPISODE
458

AI Body Doubles, Conor McGregor, $15M Podcast, Rich People & Health

May 23, 2023·61:00·Sam & Shaan·Listen·AppleSpotify
0:0030:3061:00
16 moments · 163 paragraphs · synced to the second
SAM

And then we have another guy, Larry Ellison, billionaire guy, you know, $50 billion plus. He started Oracle. He says, death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and just vanish and just not be there?

SHAAN

Was he stoned?

SAM

What did he say?

SHAAN

Yeah.

SAM

Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road. Dude, I got a lot of stuff to talk about today. Do you?

SHAAN

Yeah, I'm excited to— I'm excited to see. But, you know, I want to say something. Um, people have been a little bit spoiled by this podcast, I, I got to say. I can say a little spoiled. Um, people just expect that every single episode is going to be a banger. Every single episode is just going to bring a little smile to your face, put a little money in your pocket, give you a little nugget of wisdom that you might be able to, to say to somebody throughout the day, and they think you are— you are that wise. And I think people got a little spoiled, and not every podcast is gonna be a banger. Not every podcast is gonna deliver. Not every day is gonna be one of those days. Some days you just don't have it, but today is not that day. Today we have it.

SAM

You have it too.

SHAAN

I just, I, I just looked at the document. I saw what you had on there. I don't know anything about these topics. I'm excited to hear what you got.

SAM

Let me bring up the first topic, rich people and health. And I'm talking like really rich people. And the reason I was interested in this is Sam Altman. All the rage right now. Sam Altman, you know, uh, helped run Y Combinator and then now is the CEO of OpenAI. And he's in the news because he did this like thing in front of the Senate and he was very endearing. He's incredibly likable now. And he's also very successful. I read this article and it said something about two things that stood out. It said something like he put all of his liquid net worth. So he said in this article, he goes, I basically put 100% of my liquid net worth into two companies. The first is Helion Energy. He invested his own money, $375 million of his own money. And the second business, uh, was called Retro. It's a health company. He invested $180 million. So that kind of caught my eye.

SHAAN

And by the way, remember we did a segment on Sam, I don't know, a couple months ago, and it was because I had read this thing that Sam Altman led the round in Helium with $300-something million. And I started texting people being like, how much money does Sam have that he's investing $300 million into a single company? Uh, is he, does he have a fund? Does he secretly have a fund? And some people are like, no, I, he might have a fund. I wouldn't be surprised, but I think this was his, I think this was personal, right? And it just didn't make sense. And we did this whole deep dive cuz that one number just sounded outrageous. And now this is some new information that he's saying, yeah, I actually did put all my eggs in two basket, uh, two, two eggs in What basket?

SAM

In a recent article, the quote is that, or there's a quote from him admitting, he goes, I basically put all of my liquid net worth into that. And so Retro Health kind of caught my eye. And then in another article that just came out, he said that, uh, he was talking about like his daily routine and he talked about his, uh, like he's obsessed with like, everyone used to talk about how he was obsessed with the end of the world. So he has like this property that has like gas masks and all this other shit, whatever. That's interesting. But we've talked about that. But then he also says that he's really obsessed with anti-aging and he goes, it's mostly simple stuff. I try to eat healthy, I exercise, I sleep enough, and I take metformin. That caught my eye.

SHAAN

One of these does not belong. Yeah. One of these is things my, my mom advises me to do. All of these are things my mom advises me to do except for one.

SAM

Yeah. So the metformin thing caught my eye and also that he put $300 million of his own money. He goes, I take metformin and he goes, I also hope to one day take Retro Health's medicines, which they haven't come out with yet. Have you heard of metformin? Do you know what this is?

SHAAN

I've heard about this because Vitalik, the guy from Ethereum, he was on someone's podcast and instead of asking about crypto, at one point they were like, let's talk about other stuff you're super into. Like, oh, longevity, you're interested in health. And he's like, yeah, I'm kind of interested in it. I've taken metformin and rap— what's the other one called? Rap something. Rapamycin.

SAM

Yeah, that's another longevity drug. I don't know much about that.

SHAAN

He's like, I don't think he said he takes it regularly. He's like, but I'm interested in that. I'd like to, I'd like to learn more about that.

SAM

So, about a year ago I was telling you about semaglutide and I'm like, this drug is interesting. I think it's going to be popular and it got very popular.

SHAAN

No, no, no. Say what you really said.

SAM

What did I say? It's a miracle drug.

SHAAN

You're like, dude, I'm injecting myself with this shit. Unbelievable. I don't crave candy anymore. I'm losing so much weight. This thing's crazy. Yeah, you were right.

SAM

I tested it out. I don't take it anymore, but I'm, I'm like a guinea pig. I'll inject myself with anything to try it out. And so I tried it out and so I got a little bit more interested in this. And so everything I'm about to say, I wanna preference this that's saying I don't know shit. I've listened to like a handful of podcasts and read like some studies. That's about, that's the education I have here. But basically metformin is similar-ish to semaglutide in that it was created in the '90s or it was created before that but got FDA approved in the '90s. And the whole shtick behind it is that it helps insulin sensitivity, which basically just means Uh, when you eat sugar or crave sugar or whatever, your blood sugar spikes. And if you're diabetic, that's why this drug is important. That's basically all I know. But the reason why this is important for longevity is what people have found is that there is a huge correlation between your blood sugar spiking and how long you can live. So basically when your blood sugar spikes like a huge amount as if you just ate tons of sugar, and if that spikes a lot, that's correlated with living less or not as long as it being like stable all the time. So the reason why some of these, I think they're called GLPs, glucose, like it basically limits like your glucose spiking is what these drugs do. That's like the dumb meathead version, which is all I know of explaining it. And the reason why these drugs are interesting is because they would give it to diabetics and like, oh hey, your sugar, blood sugar isn't spiking. Oh weird. A lot of these people are living like kind of a long time. What the hell is going on? And then that's when they were like, man, this drug actually might be good for making you live longer because it's correlated with keeping your blood sugar low, which is also correlated with making you live for a little bit longer. And so that's what this drug is. And I started Googling it and all these like bi— and there's definitely downsides, but all these like biohackers and also like these really rich guys, I'm talking like $500 million, billion-dollar folks, it seems like a ton of them are taking this drug. Do you know anyone who's taking this?

SHAAN

Personally, I don't know anyone who's taking it, but I don't, um, ask. And I would bet that a good number of our friends— I would say like, I would bet that 20% of our friends who kind of fit this category of like, they, um, they went into Chuck E. Cheese, they got all the tickets, and now they don't want to leave. Uh, it's basically like really rich people who have won at life, and now they only think about big picture things, and they're trying not to die because, uh, they got it, they got it pretty good. And so I would say it's probably very common in those circles.

SAM

And so like, I first was interested in how like wealthy people care about health like years ago, 10 years ago, I read the biography of John Rockefeller and John Rockefeller, you know, was, he probably died in 1930 or 1940. So he basically in the book, they're like, he chooses his food super slow and he makes sure that it's like fully liquid before he swallows. And like when he was like 80 years old, he basically was like a vegetarian. And if he wanted to eat a piece of chocolate, he would like call his doctor and say like, hey, is it okay if I have this? And he was like anal about that. And then I listened to Ben Wilson's How to Take Over the World with Tom Edison, Thomas Edison. And he did some similar stuff and he was like, I eat light and I try not— I don't overeat. I take a nap once a day. Like he, like all these health stuff. So I started thinking like, that's interesting. So like wealthy people have always cared about it. The difference between today's wealthy people and in 19 or 1880 is basically like we have a bit more science. And so I've been obsessed with like what some of these wealthy people are doing. And I want to read you a few quotes and tell you about a few interesting things that people are doing, like incredibly wealthy people. For example, Peter Thiel. He has the most Peter Thiel quote I've ever heard on death. He says, there, there are these people who say that death is natural and it's just part of life. And I think nothing further can be from the truth. He goes, um, I believe that the acceptance of death is a psychological defense mechanism and I dismiss it as being weird and sociopathic. And then he talks about like how like living forever will be bad for the economy. He goes, that's okay. Even if there are problems with that, it's better than being dead. And so he like talks about how he takes HGH, human growth hormone, and he's doing this other thing called parabiosis, which I don't know exactly what that is, but he's spending, uh, oh, and that's like where the, the rumor of him being a blood boy. So parabiosis is like where you take younger people's blood and put it in your body to like, right. Live long, but that's all I know about it. And then we have another guy, Larry Ellison, billionaire guy, you know, $50 billion plus, he started Oracle. He says, death has never made any sense to me. How can a person be there and just vanish and just not be there?

SHAAN

Was he stoned when he said that?

SAM

It's like, you know how like babies, it takes them like 6 months to realize that like when you cover your eyes, like you're, you're, you know, like you cover like your own eyes, it's like, look, I'm not here, now I'm here. Uh, he's, it's kind of like, he's like Benjamin Buttons for that. Like, you know, he's going in reverse.

SHAAN

Um, stunned by a game of peekaboo.

SAM

And then there's, uh, one more person that I thought was interesting that we've talked about, Brian Johnson. We've had him on the pod. He has this thing Blueprint, which we all know about, but two interesting changes have come from that. So the, the background is Brian Johnson started Braintree, which owns Venmo and all this other stuff. He sold it. He's likely a billionaire. And he does this thing called the Blueprint where he like is spending $2 or $3 million a year and he like doesn't eat sugar. He only eats plants. He exercises a certain way, but he measures all of it like, uh, religiously. And you could go on and see it. Well, I found two things interesting with that, that now that he's getting popular, which I think you and I get like 0.5% credit for him being popular. We were, we were early on that train, which gives me pride, but One, uh, one interesting thing is there's a subreddit now called like The Blueprint and there's people mimicking what he's doing. And I've been paying attention to the subreddit. It only has like 3,000 people, but the engagement is really, really high and there's people testing it. And when I read their posts, I'm like, I don't know entirely that if like being a vegan is good or not good for you, but the way that you guys are describing this, I'm all in, you know what I mean? Like it's very intoxicating. And whenever you see stuff and content like that, I, you, I can kind of feel like it's going to be popular. And the second thing that's popped up is go to rejuvenationolympics.com.

SHAAN

So like, okay, what are the, what are the Rejuvenation Olympics? Is it what it sounds like? I mean, how does this work?

SAM

So there's a leaderboard of which Bryan Johnson is number one, but there's thousands of people.

SHAAN

By the way, the tagline is hilarious. What is it? So it says So Rejuvenation Olympics, where you win by never crossing the finish line.

SAM

That's good. That's amazing, right?

SHAAN

That's good. Well done, whoever that was.

SAM

Nice one. So the whole competition is to see is who can decrease their biological age compared to their chronological age. So who can— like, and I don't understand how they make up like the rules, but it's hundreds of people and they're uploading like their pre results and then their like most recent results. And like, I don't— I think I don't know if there's a prize other than bragging and potentially not dying, but it's really fascinating. Do you see that list? It's cool looking, right?

SHAAN

Yeah. So basically it'll be like Brian Johnson, his chronological age, 45 years old, and then it's ranked on his improvement from the baseline, which I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'm guessing it's basically what his chronological age versus biological age and what's the diff is kind of my guess.

SAM

What's the diff? What's the diff?

SHAAN

Yeah, you gotta hit the diff.

SAM

But anyway, all this stuff about like what, like, you know, there's like, what's that phrase?

SHAAN

Like whatever, like Brian Johnson created this thing.

SAM

So he created it.

SHAAN

Okay. Some guy, uh, Oliver, um, did it. Yeah. So, you know, I also have a handsomeindianolympics.com.

SAM

Yeah.

SHAAN

I'm currently number 1. We're taking content, taking nominations for spots 2 through 100.

SAM

But dude, it is like fascinating. Like, what's that phrase? Like, whatever, like, the nerds are doing on the weekends is going to be popular. It's kind of the same thing with like billionaires, which is like whatever billionaires are doing, like everyone else is going to want to do. And, uh, this stuff is fascinating to me. I, I don't know, like, I don't know, like, A, if any of this is true or bullshit, and B, like, can any normal person ever have access to this stuff? I don't know, but I know that there's something here And I'm not, but I'm not sure how it's gonna play out.

SHAAN

Well, okay, let's, let's do a couple of these kind of like takeaways. So I think you're right that this stuff like Metformin and other anti-aging or reverse aging drugs are gonna get more popular.

SAM

I also think that, by the way, Metformin and Semaglutide, I don't think they're in the same category at all, but kind of in that they're like diabetic stuff that now regular people are using. Semi-glutide, it's sold out. Like if, like you, if you globally, yeah, like you can't, it takes even like if you're wealthy, it takes weeks to get it. Like, so that has happened already. Like there's on TikTok. So like TikTok, I think is like a good barometer of what like the average person is doing. Like Lady Gaga had a video and she looked skinny and they called and like the top comment was like, damn, she's got that Ozempic face because apparently if you lose a lot of weight really quickly. So like people are already like using that as like vernacular and, and phrasing. So it's already there.

SHAAN

Totally. The second thing I would say is I had never even heard of this concept of measuring your biological age versus your chronological age. Like I didn't even know there was a, there was such a thing that you could separate those two numbers. But now that I know, I don't want to unknow it. And actually I'm very curious as to what my biological versus chronological age is. I'm sure there are many, many people who are curious about that. And so I could see somebody creating a testing service that's either kind of like an EverlyWell, whatever, that's like, uh, you know, draw your blood and give you some result, or like even a clinic, like a DEXA scan place where you go and they take you through the battery of tests that you need to do in order to give you this report. And, uh, so I could see that being, uh, you know, a business or a trend that, that takes place in the future. That's kind of exciting. And I think that the beauty of that model is basically, um, you can— you could go low price on that test because I think you get— your upsell will be so strong, um, once you give someone their number and they're sort of thinking about the big picture. Uh, I think you could upsell thousands and thousands of dollars worth of either nutrition, training, medicine, some combination of, of whatever health stuff, if you had a low-cost, like an at-cost basically, um, biological age test?

SAM

There's a company that's doing it right now that I tried out. It's called InsideTracker. I first heard about them because Andrew Huberman talks about them. So I don't actually know like the science behind it and it could be complete junk. I don't, I'm not sure, but because he endorsed it, I was like, all right, I'm interested. But it's called InsideTracker and I do it about twice a year and it's $600 and you go to like Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp and you get blood and then you get the results in like a week, but it's called InsideTracker. It's $600. Or maybe $700, something like that. Still not like crazy cheap, but like once I saw my biological age, it was like a competition. So now every time, every 6 months, I'm trying to like reduce it.

SHAAN

So what is your difference? What's your chronological versus biological? Do you have a big difference or no?

SAM

Yeah, 9 years. So my biological was, uh, 22 or 23, something like that. I'm 33. Uh, so it was, it was, I, I did pretty good.

SHAAN

Yeah, that's amazing.

SAM

The only thing I had to work on was my cholesterol. I had higher cholesterol and I don't even know like entirely what cholesterol is.

SHAAN

So what did you do? You just gave blood in order to do that?

SAM

Yeah. Yeah. You, you give a fair amount of blood. Uh, but yeah, you, you get blood.

SHAAN

'Cause I thought what Bryan Johnson's doing, he's measuring like each organ individually.

SAM

Like, so he's doing, he like, what I'm doing is like the JV team. What he's doing is like professional athletes. Uh, yeah, he's, he's like going overboard. Or I don't know about overboard, but you know, he's crazy, right? Like he'll eat like the same meal every single day and it's like nuts or like—

SHAAN

It's like a hot oatmeal made of spinach. It's like crazy.

SAM

I saw this tweet. So basically on May 15th, this guy named Ben tweeted out that on this one website that buys and sells businesses, there's a podcast. For sale. It does $2.2 million in profit. It's an entrepreneur podcast. The owner works 20 hours a week recording 7 podcasts, so it's one per day. The company only has 3 full-time employees, and it's a podcast that's been around for, uh, 10 years, and it has nearly 4,000 episodes. And so A, I was trying to figure out which podcast this is, and I have a guess of which I'm almost certain it is, but this person has never confirmed it. I think it's Entrepreneur on Fire by John Lee Dumas, who's been on our pod and us on his. Uh, but I have no, there's no confirmation. This is just a guess. I would bet everything that it's him. Uh, and then, but I have no—

SHAAN

just a guess that I would bet my life on.

SAM

Yeah, but I have zero, I have, you know, it's not actually confirmed. And the second thing is he's asking $15 million for this. That's the asking price. So my question to you is, what do you think this is worth?

SHAAN

It's hard because if you buy it, he's not coming with it, correct?

SAM

So the way— if you guys Google, uh, like, uh, so the guy's name is Ben Tiglar, so T-I-G-G-E-L-A-R, and you'll find his tweet. You get directed to—

SHAAN

he's a good follow, by the way. He has good, like, buying businesses tweets. So I like his Twitter.

SAM

He'll link you to a thing where you could see like the page that, uh, that, that, that you'll see a bunch of high-level details and then you can enter in your information and they make you sign an NDA. Well, he'll send you the whole deal book. I purposely didn't do the NDA part. So just so I could talk about it. So I'm only referencing what I saw on the deal page, which is like high-level stuff. So I don't know if he goes with it.

SHAAN

Uh, by the way, if you go to his, if you go to Entrepreneurs on Fire's website, there's a ticker at the top that shows, uh, revenue for April 2023. You click it and it'll tell you that, uh, in April he made $181,607. Here's the full report. And you can see that since he launched it 10 years ago, this podcast, he says, has generated $19 million in net income for him in the, in the, uh, I guess 11 years now since, since it is, uh, since it has been launched. That's pretty stunning, uh, for, for this podcast that I would say is like a good podcast, but it's not like, uh, it's not like one of these podcasts. If I said like, name the podcast that, you know, is your, your favorite podcast in the world, the one that influences you the most, the one that was the most, one of the most popular entrepreneurial podcasts, I would not name this one. I don't think most people would name this one. And for this podcast to have generated $19 million in net income since, uh, 2012 is, is pretty, pretty stunning. And you can see that it's basically 91% sponsorships. 4% courses, 4% affiliate, 2% his book sales.

SAM

And my, my opinion, and this has nothing to do with John, this has nothing to do with his business. I think that this podcast is worth, without him, close to zero. Just about close to zero. And what is interesting—

SHAAN

that's crazy.

SAM

No, I— and I'll explain why. Because what— let's say that you own this What's going to happen? You pay $15 million. What's going to happen like the first 6 months without him? Like you're just going to make residual revenue and, or, and then what? He'll go and start his own.

SHAAN

He'll go. Oh, well, no, I think you're going to have a non-compete here. If he, if you buy this thing from, first of all, nobody's buying this for $15 million.

SAM

That's because what do you think it's worth?

SHAAN

I think you could buy this. I think you could buy something like this for $5 to $6 million if you were serious about it. Um, you would have to be betting on two things. Number one, that the loyalty is to the, 'cause I think what he does is interviews, correct? I don't actually listen to the pod.

SAM

I think it's interviews. It's like 20-minute interviews.

SHAAN

So I think you have to bet that his listeners are there to hear a certain type of person come on and speak, and you have to be a good interviewer. So they're not there for John, they're there for, for, uh, guest, guest A, B, C, D, E. Um, you'd have to be betting that and you'd have to be betting that he's not going to go create a competing podcast of the same ilk and draw away people who are used to him there. If you were to do those two things and you bought this at a 2 or 3x multiple of profits, I don't think that's insane. I also don't think it's what I would do. Like, I don't think I would make that bet, but I don't think that's an insane bet. To buy it for $15 million, I think is an insane move.

SAM

You think— what do you think he'll get?

SHAAN

I think he's likely to get no offers, period, um, because the number— the subset of buyers is pretty small for something like this. And I think he could sell it for between 1 to 3x profit.

SAM

Dude, and I don't know why he would post it. Maybe we'll be proven wrong. I don't know why he would post it on this site because a guy like Ben found it and immediately people were in the comments are like, oh, it's this one. This episode had, like, they show all your revenue. I know how many episodes it has. Like, this is just like the easiest thing ever, you know what I mean? Uh, like, they like totally guessed what it was, and I think that that's crazy. I, I, I, that's, it was a tough mood. And it's also like, we appeal to entrepreneurial people who buy and sell businesses, and so you're just gonna, like, your audience is the one that's gonna out you, you know what I'm saying?

SHAAN

Does he say, uh, does he say how much, uh, how many subs, like, how many subscribers he has, or how big the podcast is?

SAM

Yeah, in the, in the listing, I think it says how many downloads it's either gets a year or a month, but I believe it doesn't say what it is. Uh, it just says 145 million listens. So I don't know how you would calculate that. You divide that by—

SHAAN

I mean, it's too many episodes. There's like 4,000 episodes or something.

SAM

So, but it's something like 1 to 2 million downloads per month. On, and that's a daily pod. So I don't know how much each one gets, but anyway, kind of an interesting thing. If someone could sell this like a personality-driven podcast and then that reverts to not personality-driven, that this would be very, very, very fascinating.

SHAAN

Yeah, I, I'm very curious to see how this plays out. I don't know how personality-driven he is. I think that's, that, that's the question. Like if you're, um, like if it's the Tim Ferriss Podcast, it's literally called the Tim Ferriss Podcast, and I would say that the that Tim is a very branded interviewer. You know, his voice, his style, his face is the thumbnail. Like, I think that's like impossible to sell. Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas, I don't know. I think it's possible, but I'm not sure what the upside would be. You know, you have to come in and be like, great, here's what I'm gonna do. Let's see, can I, how can I make my investment more valuable? Can I add more episodes? Well, he's doing one a day already, so probably not much from there. Can I launch auxiliary products? Well, he's already already got his journal, his book, his course, his affiliate links. It's like, no, he's kind of squeezed all the monetization juice. It's not like there's obvious things that he just didn't do for this thing. Can I grow the audience? No, pretty much impossible to grow a podcast audience just by brute force. There's not like a really clear way to do that. So I don't know why you would buy based on that. I think based on the fact that there's not very clear growth levers, I think that makes it a tough buy too.

SAM

I guess we will see.

SHAAN

But he can tell us what— he can tell us why we're wrong. Maybe tweet at us, John. Tell us, uh, why somebody should buy this for $15 million and how they're gonna make, you know, 3 times their money in, uh, in the next, you know, 5 years on that. The McGregor documentary, you watched it?

SAM

Yeah, really good. It didn't talk about his business stuff, which I thought was kind of— I wish it would have, but it was really good. What do you think about him?

SHAAN

Okay, so my— so I used to love Conor McGregor. Like, at a given point in time, he would have been by far my favorite athlete. Combination of entertainment, success, and the mindset. So I thought that that was just an amazing combination I had never really seen before. And his run-up from guy who was basically an apprentice plumber on welfare to richest athlete, highest-earning athlete in the world, global star, two-weight world champion, in like a 6-year period was— that 6 years of following that was unbelievable to watch that kind of rags-to-riches story.

SAM

He was kind of like the equivalent of a redneck, but in Ireland is what I've realized. Like, watching that documentary, I was like, oh, you like are really good looking, but you are like a trashy, like, redneck person. Like, that, that's basically what you were.

SHAAN

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And he's had many documentaries, actually. He's had many because from the beginning he was filming Or people were filming him because he has like a sort of charisma and a magnetism about him. And he had a lot of self-belief. He had like an unbelievable amount of self-belief where he's like, hey, record this, record this. And they're like, who are you? You're not even— you're an amateur fighter. Like, why are we recording you? And he's like, because I'm going to be the best. And so he's actually had, I think, 3 different things on Netflix. This was the latest one. Couple of thoughts. Number 1, Special people are nuts, and you got to be a little nuts in order to do what you're doing. And he's openly admitted to being a bit nuts. In fact, he has this quote in the documentary where he's like, I'm like Vincent van Gogh. I've lost my mind to the game. I don't know nothing else except for this game. Every moment, every thought is about this game. I have lost my mind to it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

SAM

There was an interview where someone was like, hey, what'd you think about the Manchester United game, and he was like, oh, it was good, you know, it was great. Look, I'm gonna be honest, I don't, I don't even know what game you're talking about. Like, I, I don't know anything about soccer. I, you can ask me about politics, I don't know anything about it. Uh, I, I watch none of this. All I care about is fighting, right?

SHAAN

Exactly. So he had like a laser focus. That's all on the come up. And then he makes it, he becomes the highest earning athlete in the world. He's, uh, creates this whiskey brand that sells for $600 million and he makes maybe $200 million out of that.

SAM

You think that, you think that those, that number's right?

SHAAN

Yeah, pretty sure that's right. Um, and then I, uh, and then he's got his suit line, then he's got his, his McGregor Fast program, he's got his, uh, recovery spray, he's got like all these other businesses, right? And so he, um, and then, you know, he starts to lose and he starts to get in trouble with the law and he starts to sort of, he becomes this larger than life persona. So he's an interesting guy. He's, he's got A little bit of a screw loose. I thought two things stood out to me from the documentary. One was early McGregor mindset was the best. So the way they filmed this was they would take present day footage of him going through something and they would splice it with like before he was famous, the things this guy would say, and they put it together. And when you watch it together, it's like the perfect mindset. It's like adversity and then him saying exactly how to deal with this adversity or how to avoid this, this, this problem. But the problem was all of the mindset stuff was from him before. It was like, you know, him 10 years ago. And I think, you know, the editing made it look like a sort of, in a way, like very admirable. But I think what's interesting is actually how much it changes. Like the mindset that got him there isn't necessarily the mindset he still has because like at the beginning, his mindset overcame his environment. Nobody from Ireland had ever made it. He didn't have a proper training setup. He was not even in the UFC and his mind, it was like mind over matter. And then the problem is then the matter got so big. He's sitting on a Lamborghini yacht. He's got everybody kissing his butt and he doesn't have to wake up at 4 in the morning and go run anymore. Then at some point, his own success became his demise in a way. I think there's some poetic in that. The second thing I thought was he had a quote that I really loved. I think it's very relatable to me at least. They go, so what happened? Did you just, you know, you stopped training? Everybody says that. McGregor, you got rich, you stopped training. And he goes, no, no, no. In training, I was 100% committed. I was 100%. I gave every ounce of my effort in the training sessions. It was outside the training sessions that I was not 100% committed. I was 75% committed. He's like, but that was the difference. He's like, you know, um, you know, the, it, it, like here I was willing to sweat, but outside of this, you know, I would, uh, I would tell myself, you shouldn't eat that. Then I ate it. Yeah. You shouldn't drink that. Then I drank it. You should, you should, what, you're gonna wake up at this time. I don't wake up. You're gonna go to sleep on time. I don't go to sleep on time. He's like, and those little, he's like, those were little losses and those little losses., or it could have been a small win, and instead it was a small loss. And I was taking those small losses outside of training. And he goes, that's what deteriorates the mind. It weakens the mind. He's like, it infiltrates your brain, these small losses that don't— individually, they don't seem like anything, but they add up one day after another, next after next. And my mind became weaker and doubt started to creep in for the first time. And I started to slip outside of the training, and I thought, Man, that's such a good lesson and frame for like, since I watched that, now all day I see opportunities. I'm like, this is either going to be a small win or a small loss. It's not going to— no one's even going to know besides me. Only I know that this situation is even occurring. You know, I'm feeding my daughter, she's eating mac and cheese. I've eaten clean all day, but she doesn't eat the food. And now there's mac and cheese in front of my face. Or, you know, do I take that bite? Do I not take that bite? It's a small win or a small loss. Going to sleep on time, it's a small win or a small loss. And since that documentary, I started racking up small wins. I realized how many small losses I was taking, and I decided not to take those out.

SAM

You want to know something funny?

SHAAN

Yeah.

SAM

I remembered that exact where he goes, there was times I was supposed to wake up, I didn't wake up. I knew I shouldn't have ate that, and I ate it.

SHAAN

I ate that. It was so relatable.

SAM

There's this, you know, the thing about him is there's all these small details about him that were really fascinating. For example, he has a tattoo on his arm and it says, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And I thought that, I thought, I was like, that's just a really good phrase.

SHAAN

That's a, it's a military phrase. I don't know if you ever heard that.

SAM

No, I didn't know that.

SHAAN

And I thought that that was like, um, I think it's like a Navy phrase or something. There was a guy who worked for us that was in the Army and he, he used to say that. He used to say, uh, I know we want to go fast, but, but remember, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And he goes, that's how they teach us when I think it's for rowing. Like, like if you try to just thrash while you're rowing, you're trying to go fast, but you're not actually going to go fast. What works in rowing is clean, smooth, aligned strokes by the whole team and the boat goes fast. And like, that's kind of what you want to do. Yeah.

SAM

And he was fascinating. And he also, I don't know if he explicitly said this, but there was this one time where he does this famous thing in one of his, I think his first UFC fight, he knocked someone out and at the end typically one fighter of the 16 gets a $50,000 bonus if they have a good knockout. And at the end of the interview, he goes, Dana, 50 G's, baby. Like he's calling out Dana to give him the 50 G's. And he was the first person, I think, to do that, which is pretty funny. And then afterwards they go, all right, fine, you got the 50 G's. And they go, what are you going to spend it on? He goes, dude, I was on welfare last week, but I'm going to buy a suit. I'm going to buy this. And then the next fight, Ariel Hawani, who we've had on the pod, interviews him. He goes, Connor, I saw that you just showed up in a Louis Vuitton suitcase. He goes, and he says something like, I gotta buy the best to feel like the best. And if you look at his life, I'm typically not a guy, I don't like to spend a lot of money. I don't like flashy stuff, but he does something interesting where he starts leveling up his life to where he's like, and he'll wear, like, if you and I, if we think about When we were younger, we're like, well, a businessman has to have a suitcase and a tie. And then now we're older, we're like, who the fuck would wear that? You look like a fool. He still kind of plays that part. So when he goes to a business meeting, he wears a suit and I look at him in that suit and I'm like, yeah, dude, you look like I trust you more. Like for some reason, like, you know, there's like, you look more—

SHAAN

custom fitted tailored three-piece suit to the, you know, to the, to the nines.

SAM

Yeah. And my takeaway from that was like, you know, like I used to dismiss like certain dress or certain clothing or certain cars. Like, but like, man, sometimes when you level up your lifestyle, it's almost like there's this old story about a guy who wanted to sell like a Picasso and he's like, come to my warehouse, look at the Picasso. And the guy looks at it and then there's, and he wasn't very impressed. And there's another story where a guy takes him to this like small theater where there's classical music playing and he dimmed the lights and he goes, look at this Picasso now. And you sit down at this beautiful like velvet chair and you like, right. Oh man. Like it's so much more beautiful now. And that's kind of like what he did with his life. He surrounded himself with like this fancy shit, which typically I think is bad. But for some reason I realized it's kind of cool to like surround yourself with stuff and act as if it's like, no, like I'm here and I must act as if, or act, you know, act like I am here.

SHAAN

Yeah. And he's talked about that in the thing. They say, you know, what do you want? You know, do you want this? You want that? He goes, he goes, like one of the common things is he rejects the question. He rejects the premise in many, many questions. So one example is they're talking about wanting, and he goes, that's the problem. Want, want. You want this, want that. I already have. I always act from— I already have all these things. I already have the championships. I already have all the money. I already have all this. That's why I walk the way I walk. That's why I carry myself this way. Versus wanting is just pointing out that you don't have. And he's like, so from the very beginning, I carried myself this way. And he talks about, like, he talks about, like, in rejecting the question, somebody— I remember once he was fighting Aldo and they're like on this world tour and they're just talking mad shit to each other the whole time. And it was so— it got so like— Conor was basically bullying this guy verbally. And one of the— they go on some TV show, some Good Morning America type show, and they're like, all right, well, you know, we've heard you guys say this, but Okay, let's do it a little different. Conor, what's one thing you'd like about Aldo or you respect about Aldo? Let's change it up. And he just looks at the Good Morning America person and he goes, this is not a therapy session. I am here to hurt this man. And whereas 9 out of 10 people, you're on a TV show, lights are bright, you're live on air, and you kind of like, I will say, whoever's got the stronger frame is who wins. And in most situations, you just accept the frame you're given. The reporter says, say something nice to you, say something nice. And later you kind of think back, you're like, shit, I should have said this other thing. But like in the moment, you got taken over by their frame.

SAM

One thing I noticed about him in the way he speaks is he's beautiful with words.

SHAAN

He comes into the thing with his own frame, and because of that, he doesn't get knocked off course by any questions and often will just reject the questions altogether. I want to read one quote, by the way, about the Vincent van Gogh thing. He said, he goes, I heard Vincent van Gogh lost his mind. He goes, that's happened to me, but fuck it. When the gold belt is around my waist, when my mother has a big mansion, when my girlfriend has a different car for every day of the week, and when my kids' kids have everything that they ever want, then it will pay. Then I'll be happy I lost my mind. Dude, he's— What a badass guy. What an Eric.

SAM

He's basically a rapper. You know, he's a poet. He says, McGregor is about to fight the best guy from Brazil and he goes, if this were another time, I'd storm his favela, which is like a Brazilian village. He goes, I'd storm his favela and pillage and take what is mine and his head would be on a stake. Like he says these phrases and there's another time where he gets, where he wins. And afterwards Joe Rogan's interviewing him and he like, I, he must have thought about these lines. He says, precision beats power and timing beats speed. And he says that really quick. And then like, as an audience member, you like think about that line and like, it just sits with you. You're like, wow, that was like, that's a very insightful thing. Like he says these really insightful things or he'll say like, I told you we didn't come here to take part. We came here to take over. Uh, you're like, this study, I'm like, dude, you're a conqueror kind of, but he's a very flawed person. When I watched that documentary, I'm like, there's very There's a lot of traits about him that I, you do not like.

SHAAN

He's done a bunch of bad things. He's hypocritical in a bunch of ways. There's a bunch of things. I don't focus on those because what am I going to take from that? I, well, the takeaway is that everyone's normal. Nobody's perfect. Yeah. Like everybody's flawed in their own ways. The things I do take are the things that are going to serve me. And one I remember, all right. So, you know, when you go in a startup office, uh, in San Francisco, every engineer's got like multiple monitors. It's like, uh, it's kind of just like the flex is like how many monitors you got. It's like, you know, the sysadmin always got 3, you know, most developers got at least 2. So I used to sit there just on my laptop. I didn't even have the big monitor. I was just on my little laptop. Uh, and I was like looking around, I was like, maybe I need a big monitor. And so I got a big monitor, which was just my laptop. I plugged it in. It was just bigger. I said, okay, should I get a second monitor? All right. I got a second monitor. I was like, what the hell am I supposed to put on this? I don't, I don't, I'm not trying to look at 2 things at once. That doesn't even make sense. So I just put, and for 5 years there was one McGregor quote that just was on my second monitor at all times. I only used it for this one quote and it just said, "At the end of the day, you got to feel some type of way. So why not feel unbeatable? Why not feel untouchable?" And that always stuck with me because it was like, I don't know, it resonated. It was like, it's true. At any given moment, you're gonna feel some type of way. So given I'm gonna feel some way, why don't I choose what would be the best feelings I could choose? And I'm gonna feel that way. I'm gonna choose how I feel. And I just left it there and I just left it there for 5 years. And it really helped. Like starting a startup can be kind of stressful. And most days I would say are like almost like down days. It's like, uh, it's not growing, it's not growing fast enough, it's growing too fast and shit's breaking. Like there's a lot of reasons to feel down in a startup and like that one quote changed my experience over those 5 years.

SAM

So Steve Jobs, if you read his biography, they— someone coined this term called the reality distortion field, which basically is like, regardless of what the facts were outside of Steve's brain, even though it showed like what you're about to do is not likely, he would convince himself and others that it was possible. And they called it the reality distortion field. And that's cool and all. But the reason why this relates to Connor is when Steve Jobs was doing all this stuff, he didn't have like a documentary as he was going. iPhones didn't really exist and like easy footage didn't exist. The reason why this is cool for a business person is because it's another example of which that many people have this, but it's a good example of someone who does have this, but there's cameras there catching the whole thing. And so you'll see Connor. And he's about to fight Khabib, and Khabib wins the fight. And anyone going into that was like, yeah, Khabib's going to sock him. He's going to destroy him. But Conor was like, he was so certain that he was going to beat him that afterwards he's crying and he's like, I had planned, like, here's how we were going to celebrate. We were going to, like, he totally thought that he was going to win when everyone else was like, no way, there's not a chance. But the fact that he believed it so much was really valuable, even if the outcome was the same. And I thought that that was really example, but let me give you one controversial or opinion about Conor as well as a lot of other people in this space. I predict that in 10, maybe 20 years, but probably 10, I think Conor will file for bankruptcy. And the reason I think that is I've been, you know how like you'll read about like Floyd Mayweather has made a billion dollars or Conor McGregor made $100 million from boxing. I think all of that is 100% fake and it's absolutely not true. And the reason I think this is there's this, there's this guy named Chael Sonnen. He's a former fighter, now an analyst. He went on Andrew Schultz's podcast and he goes, I can promise you that Floyd has never made $100 million from one fight, which is what he says. And I think that he has at most made $100 million collectively in his career. Uh, and he, he goes, the reason I think that is when a lot of these people talk about pay-per-view numbers and how much money they're making. You could just say anything. Like, no, like the CEO of DirecTV or whoever like handles pay-per-views has never came out and said this is how much money it made. Like, no one says that. And what Chael goes, he goes, a lot of these athletes, uh, if it's not like, you know, spoken by the guy who paid the bill, it's just completely made up. And they say that to get more. And I— and he goes, I know for a fact a lot of it is fake. Do you think— do you have examples of people who you know who have just blatantly lied? Like, Well, you and I have one friend who sold a company and let's just, I'm going to make up a fake number, but it's something like this. The headlines, if you Google it, say $200 million. I know it was $12 million. Like there's like a, there's like, I know of stories like that. Do you know of stories like that where someone has just completely lied?

SHAAN

Well, I can't think of off the top of my head somebody personally I know who's lied. I guess the versions that I've seen of this are almost like this, the petty crime version of this, where they're like, um, yeah, I sold my company to whatever. It's like, you got a job from them, right? Like, you know, it's, uh, it's like, yeah, how much cash was, uh, how much cash was exchanged up front for the assets? That— there's a difference, um, like versus like, we, you know, we sold it to whatever, Facebook, and then you're like Okay, cool. You got acquihired and it's okay. There's nothing wrong with getting acquihired, but like, or just never having done it to begin with. It's like, you know, join something that's already working and then say, you know, yeah, I led blank at this company, right? Like there's like lots of like career lies like that. I can't think of an example of somebody who sold their company for, let's say, $10 million and said it was 50. I personally don't, I don't know. I gotta ask you which friend we're talking about over here. Uh, I have a feeling, I have a feeling I know who you're talking about, but most I would say, um, I don't think they do that. I don't know. Is this common?

SAM

Um, well, I think like it's common to round up, which is no big deal because like there's always like, uh, little details about it where regardless of how you look at it, it could be true.

SHAAN

It could be false. I'll tell you, I'll tell you in our case, we sold to Twitch. Um, when we sold Bebo to Twitch, I've said this many times, like I gave a presentation at your conference called How to Sell a Failing Company, right? Which was basically saying like, we sold a company that wasn't like Instagram where it was so hot, it was the next big thing, and then Facebook comes and buys it for a billion dollars. That's one type of sale. There's another type of sale which is like a business is kind of working, not really. It's, it's okay, it's good, but it's not gonna be huge. And you find a, a good landing spot for it. For the asset and the talent. And when we sold to Twitch, um, there was a reported number that came out that said, uh, we sold for $25 million. We did not sell for $25 million.

SAM

We sold for— who got that number?

SHAAN

Uh, I know how they got that number, which was, uh, somebody I know submitted a tip to one of the thing, one of the, one of the news sites or whatever. And I don't know if they put that number in or they asked them and they hinted at some number and like the journalist just ran with it.

SAM

So dude, and then another person, which I never told them to do, they just did it. They were trying be helpful.

SHAAN

They were like, hey, this is whatever they asked for this, or they, they asked to comment, and I just kept it, you know. I think they might have just been like, yeah, rumored, rumored to be something like this.

SAM

What you'll know, like, so for example, with our sale, there was like some numbers that were on in headlines, it was way lower, and then there was others that was way higher. And I'm like, I, I have no idea how you guys got this information. But what you'll notice is that someone will write an article, TechCrunch will say this was sold for made up number, $30 million. And then they'll say rumor, and this other person will say this person sold for this. And then you get asked to a conference and your introduction is he sold for this. And then it's like this other person's like, here's the $30 million man. You know what I mean? It's like, whoa, it's like, it's crazy. Like this all just spreads. It just spreads and it's completely made up. And so whenever I, um, whenever you see articles about this person's net worth, what I tell people, I go, look, Google this person's name, net worth. And every once in a while, like, I've written articles about someone's net worth, like Ross Ulbricht from Silk Road, when I, I like wanted to test this theory. And so my article will come up, will come up, and I'm— other people will source, uh, cite it. And I go, hey, just so you know, I made that up. It's completely fake. And so whenever you read about these other people's net worth, just know that the net worth things on Google are So far off. So far off. It's laughable.

SHAAN

I don't think I've seen one that's accurate, to be honest with you. Anytime I have any idea about someone's net worth and I Google it, it is so far off. It's actually like just completely misleading. If it tells you one thing, it's that it's not that number. Yeah. Process of elimination. We know it's not that. It's laughable. That stuff happens. But when we sold the— even myself, I can't tell you exactly how much we sold for. Why? Because deal has like so many, uh, different numbers. There's an upfront, you got this many millions of cash. Okay, cool. But then we also got a big signing bonus for, uh, for, for agreeing to come on board and join the team. Then you got your salary, but that's not part of the deal, uh, and your normal RSUs from the, from the thing. But then we got deal RSUs on top. And then you're like, okay, so which one is it? And then by the time those vested, the stock price had doubled. So it was like, well, did I should count it from when we got it, right? But I made, but I received more than the number that, that was when it was granted. But so which one is it? And then, for example, we had another deal with, uh, Facebook and Facebook's deal was one extra year. So like Twitch was 3 years, this was a 4-year deal. And so that number, the headline number of what we got offered there was bigger. But in actuality, it's like, well, yeah, you got to stay for 4 years to earn all those RSUs. Are you going to even do that?, you know, like some of the RSUs we got, my co-founder bounced after 1 year. So he didn't even get the other 2 years. So, you know, which, which number was it? The number he got or the number that was granted or the number that it was worth on the day that—

SAM

Yeah, that's why I said, that's what I was talking about with rounding. Rounding is different because it's like, I don't feel like telling you it's complicated and explaining. So I'll just like make something up that's ballpark or directionally correct. Do you want to go to some of your other topics or save them?

SHAAN

Um, Let's do this AI body doubles thing. So I've now seen this trend of people doing startups that are, I'm calling like body doubles or stunt doubles. So first there was a bunch of news the other day about this Snapchat influencer girl named Karen Marjorie, and she partnered with some AI company and they created a, um, an AI version of her voice. So her fans could text with her and they could get audio notes from her in her voice, uh, generated by AI, um, for a dollar a minute. And she made $72,000 the first day off of 1,000 users. And so, and then the news, like, picked this up and ran with it.

SAM

Karen's a real person, right? I'm looking her up.

SHAAN

She's a real person.

SAM

Okay.

SHAAN

Yeah. Her last tweet, uh, is a tweet that says, 'cause I looked her up just before this to, to just do, you know, some research. And she, uh, her last tweet was, I love the ocean. And then it was just a picture of her butt.

SAM

So, so what's your—

SHAAN

something about content creation from everybody.

SAM

So is she famous just for being like, she's like, she's like smoking. Is that why she's famous? Just for being pretty?

SHAAN

Yeah, I think she's cute. And that's like the fame. I don't know. Maybe she has some other backstory. I'm not sure.

SAM

Ah, fellow ocean lover. Yeah, you like the ocean too, huh?

SHAAN

Let me try this. So she made $72,000 the first day. The news runs with this. Why? Because anything that's like AI good or AI bad is going to get publicity right now. But there's other ideas that are like this. So I talked about AI Santa. I was like, somebody needs to make a Santa Claus through text-to-speech and then charge people $35, $40 to come to the website, type in a greeting saying, hey, wish my kid Stevie a happy Merry Christmas and tell him he's been a good boy and he did a great job with his soccer season and just have Santa say all that. So I think that's a business. There's a more general version of that, which is Cameo through AI. So celebrities like the idea of Cameo, but there's a reason that Cameo is all kind of like C-list sort of celebs.

SAM

Cameo is the best place to see which, which celebrity's broke.

SHAAN

Like, it's like, it's a real-time net worth calculator.

SAM

Yeah, it's the best place to go to see who—

SHAAN

it's a great place to go see upcoming celebrity divorces. Yeah, who's got bills to pay? Um, Kevin from The Office. So it's like there's a reason why it's C-list, because it takes a lot of time. George Clooney doesn't actually want to sit there and record birthday messages for 33-year-olds. It's not what he wants to do with his time.

SAM

But if you bought me a Cameo, by the way, Gilbert Godfroy, you bought me a Cameo and he just made fun of my penis size.

SHAAN

Yeah, a little too vulgar, but I thought it was great.

SAM

I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I thought it was a good wedding gift.

SHAAN

I couldn't make it to your bachelor party, so I sent you Gilbert Gottfried, the cameo. So I think that what's going to happen is celebrities are going to start licensing their name and face and voice to companies who will pay to be able to generate AI versions of that and go sell it for them. So now you get the residual revenue from your name and face, just like slap my, slap my face on a bottle of Sprite or whatever, and it sells more Sprite. People are going to do that with Cameo-like services where it's wish me happy birthday, it's congratulate me on this. And there obviously need to be some rules and boundaries around what it can and can't say. But whether Cameo itself does this or a competitor to Cameo comes out and does this with AI, for sure this is going to happen. It's an obvious idea. We've been talking about this for a long time, actually. We said that somebody should do Cameo with Pixar characters or Disney characters and just get the licenses for it. It's the same thing, but now you can animate anybody, not just a Disney character.

SAM

And before ChatGPT was a thing, there was another company that we talked about that was doing, uh, like AI girlfriends and, oh, Replika. Replika. How are they doing? Do you know?

SHAAN

They're crushing. Absolutely crushing. Yeah.

SAM

I read an article that they like changed something and that one of their users killed themselves.

SHAAN

They update the model. So like as machine learning improves or when, you know, you go from GPT-3 to GPT-4, they upgrade the model and then the users are like, My girlfriend is different. Like she's saying different things to me. What the hell? And like, sometimes it's censorship. Like she won't say this thing she used to say. She says she's not allowed to say that or talk about that anymore. Or it's like her personality changed and I'm like heartbroken. It's crazy. Like people are like, go to the Facebook groups or the subreddit.

SAM

It's wild. The Facebook group is crazy. I've been on that for since it started and it's really, really interesting.

SHAAN

I talked to the founder. She was really cool, really smart woman. I think she used to be like a journalist. She was like a famous journalist in Russia or something, and then she had to flee Russia or left Russia and then like reinvented herself and like created, became an entrepreneur.

SAM

It sounds like a James Bond villain. I like the beginning of the story, like Russian journalist who flees, starts AI company, right?

SHAAN

It's not Natalia, but it could be.

SAM

Yeah, this is great.

SHAAN

She's really impressive. Uh, I really wanted to invest, but the valuation is like super crazy. So, you know, because, because they're like a consumer AI company that actually has a bunch of traction and a bunch of revenue, which is like pretty unheard of. So, so the valuation was, was like in the hundreds of millions pretty, pretty quickly. Um, anyways, uh, there's another version of this AI body double thing happening in the business space. So people have approached me saying, hey, We trained AI on the podcast. And so now if somebody wants, uh, people, a lot of people want your advice or whatever, um, they'll pay and the AI will give them the answers and it'll give them it to in your voice and your style. You don't have to take time to do this.

SAM

What's the company called that does that?

SHAAN

Delphi, like, uh, withdelphi.com, D-E-L-P-H-I.com. Uh, so they're, they're digitizing, uh, they're a digital cloning platform that can capture how someone thinks. Making their knowledge, experiences, and opinions available to others in a personalized way.

SAM

Do they need your permission or no? I would think actually no.

SHAAN

I think eventually they will. So like, you know, they can get away with it, you know, right now and with a certain set of people. But like, if they get big and you realize, hey, they're using my name, my face, my voice, and charging other people for it, and I'm getting nothing, you know, that's just like lawsuits waiting to happen. So they, you know, they emailed basically asking like, hey, are you down for this? Um,, like, he was like, hey, I took your course, I helped me land a job at my, like, thing. Um, and then, and then I started writing viral Twitter threads based on the, what I learned in the course. Eventually my startup got acquired last week and blah, blah, blah. I'm doing this new thing. I was like, wow, that's, this is crazy. Digital, digital clones to AI clones of people, AI body doubles. I think this is an interesting little trend to watch. It's going to happen.

SAM

I think the next 2 years are going to be wild. I don't think they're going to be as wild as people think, but I think it's going to be wild. I think Dharmesh said something like, it's not going to be as bad or as great as you think. And I kind of trust him because I think that he's very, he's, he's one of the few people that has like an IQ high enough to understand this, but also has like a ton of EQ and like understands that like how people work.

SHAAN

And he's not super biased necessarily. Like, uh, if you listen to the guy who runs OpenAI tell you you know, it's pretty safe. It's like, well, you do have a bias.

SAM

That— what was interesting was Dharmesh. So HubSpot— Dharmesh is the CTO of HubSpot. Um, Dharmesh, they, they had an earnings call like 3 weeks ago or 2 weeks ago, and he doesn't talk much, uh, on the earnings call. He's not the CEO. Um, but someone asked the CEO about AI, and she goes, I'm gonna— Yamini goes, I'm gonna let Dharmesh say what he needs to say. And he gives his spiel and he gave almost the exact same spiel that he gave on our pod where he like explains it. And then if you go, you can go and look at the stock since he did that talk. And I think it's up 15% or something. I think it was like $420 or $400 the day before the earnings. Now it's close to $500 today. And then Barron's just came out with an article that said something like, HubSpot is, uh, you know, we, we think that the companies that are going to kill it with AI aren't AI companies, but big companies that will use AI. For example, HubSpot, this, this, and this. And what's really fascinating is he's on this pod telling us his opinion about it. Then on this earnings call, this banker asks about it and it's like, man, we have access because of Twitter and all this stuff. We're able to see like what's happening in front of our eyes. And it's very, very, very fascinating to see like how he's handling all this. Like, basically, he, he basically told us how he started ChatSpot, which is like an AI thing within HubSpot. He's like, this is what we did. And it sounds so simple, but then he like talks about it in a little bit more like corporate speak on the analyst calls and it, you know, created a something like a billion dollars worth of enterprise value, uh, amongst other things. But, so it's like really cool to see all this happening, uh, in front of everyone.

SHAAN

I wonder what he does after the call. He's like, well, I guess my work for the day is done. Generated a billion dollars of value for the company. Okay. Uh, you know, actually, after you sold The Hustle to HubSpot, I, uh, tuned into their first earnings call because I thought you might be on there just, you know, just leading the, uh, yeah, what's up fam? Uh, yeah, Sam here. How are we doing? We're doing fucking great.

SAM

What do you mean?

SHAAN

Yeah, yeah, dude, there's all these dumb companies out there and we're not one of them. I wanted AI to see Sam leading the earnings call.

SAM

Dude, there was one earnings call.

SHAAN

Shout out to Marathon Ranch. Uh, if anyone wants to come stay at my ranch, all of you analysts are welcome.

SAM

You guys want to see a new tattoo of my dog on my leg? That would be the first one you'd be doing at an earnings call. Yeah, I'm going to be walking around shirtless around my house while I'm eating and drinking Diet Coke. Um, did you say Did you, one time before one of these calls, he went into like the Slack of HubSpot and he goes, all right everyone, I'm going to say the word, I forget what it was, but it was like penguin 8 times on this call. And so I was like, oh fuck, I gotta listen to this. And so I tuned in and he said the word, like he threw it in and I'm just like, so funny. Like this guy, he's the best man. This is my type of guy. Just like he's winning the game, but he's having fun.

SHAAN

He's having fun.

SAM

I'm a big fan of him. I think that's it. Is that the pod? That's it.

SHAAN

That's the pod.

SAM

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