#46 - Corporate Universities, Hotel Experiences & New Credit Cards with Lance Armstrong
Is that what they do?
That's what they do.
All right, we're back. Um, before we get in, so you know how I said leave reviews?
Yeah.
Um, I think we got 200 or 300 reviews off of that.
Yeah, it was crazy. Um, and we promised people cool shit. We got to like fulfill because people are like, here's my receipt. Uh, I, I left you guys a great— I got, I got about 100 messages of people with the reviews.
I replied to all of them last night. I was sitting on my couch.
So I'm just the asshole who didn't?
Well, I CC'd you on a few. I replied to all of them with the special gift. I just let— I called them, basically. I left a video voicemail.
Yeah.
And I think that's the one thing that, that is now abundantly clear about this podcast is like, we have these goals of like We're gonna grow this thing big, but we already did the hard part, which is you get a small number of people to love you, where they're like, this is my routine, this is my favorite podcast, and I've been listening to podcasts for 5 years. Yeah. And so, uh, that's very— I don't know, it feels good, feels great.
Yeah, I had, uh, I got— I was showing Adam last night, I got, I don't know, I mean, at least a couple hundred, like, DMs on my Twitter, people with the review.
Exactly.
And I sent them all a video. So review us. Leave a video or review us and let me know, cause Sean hasn't been doing it, but at least if you let me know, you'll get something back.
All right. You know, what's my fear in all this though? Uh, so I have a fear that's crept up now. The fear is, um, I never want to be the smart person in the room. And so there's part of me, I'm sitting in this red fucking throne and, uh, throwing out ideas that I'm admittedly saying are half-baked, you know, probably bad ideas, but they're interesting to me. Um, I want to make sure that we're learning. Doing this, like I wanna be learning stuff and sharing it. I don't wanna just be sitting here saying, hey, I got answers, I'm gonna give 'em to you. And so my commitment to myself really more than anybody else, but I wanna say it out loud cuz that commits me is, uh, you know, as we do this, it's not about, oh, I have great ideas, let me say them, or, or we're brainstorming great ideas. It's we're gonna learn interesting stuff by talking to interesting people and doing research on things. And then we're gonna share what we like. We're gonna share what's fun, what's interesting to us. So that's my fear is you never wanna be the guru. You wanna be the student. Um, and so that's kind of my, my little mini rant. I agree.
I'm not trying to be a guru, and I'm certainly not.
Because some of the DMs we get, people are like, help me. Yeah, help me, you know. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't know anything. And me attaching my name to your thing does nothing. Like, we've got to do the work. And like, you know, I'll help you, but I'm not the answer.
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm not the answer.
And we could preface this by saying most of the ideas we get, I just steal from other people.
Yeah, for sure, of course.
So, all right, you wanna get in, what do we wanna talk about? You wanna talk about, can I talk about something that's happening recently?
So.
Is that what you wanna talk about?
So I wanna talk about Brandless and I wanna talk about these new credit cards that are popping up.
Yep, all right, pick one, let's do it.
All right, so Brandless, people don't know, they went out of business. What they were trying to do was, they were like, look, don't pay for the name brand, You should just have high-quality products and they should just be brandless. And because we take away the name brand, we can lower the price. That was like the initial promise or the premise of the business.
Awesome idea.
Awesome idea. I'm glad you said that because a lot of people are shitting on them now cuz they like failed. No, but I still think fucking awesome idea. And actually, of course, ironically, Brandless is a good brand. Um, and so I think that that was really cool. They raised a shit ton of money from SoftBank, like $200 million before they really achieved any product market fit. And that sort of like was the death note for the company because it was just a, the expectations when you raise $200 million is you're gonna be, you know, a billion-dollar-plus company, and if you do that too early and you haven't actually proven out your model, you haven't figured it all out, expectations crush the business.
I actually, so I didn't prepare because I just thought about this, but what do you, what's the biggest grocery store chain in America, you think?
Albertsons. Albertsons, maybe Safeway, I don't know.
Okay, let's use Safeway. Can you look up, try and find this, just a headline, try and tell me what the revenue or how many sales like generic brands for grocery stores or like the Kirkland brand or whatever, how much revenue the Kirkland brand does. Or I mean, I bet you it's astronomical. And so actually, I mean, if you think about what Brandless could become, it is the generic, the generic brand, a trusted Kirkland brand. Yeah, I think, and I think it's a great idea. Yeah. The problem was that they raised all that money right off the bat. I have a problem. There was some incompetence with leadership. I don't actually know this. Yeah. $39 billion. Kirkland brand sells $39 billion of products. 2018. Fuck.
I like that. What's that source? Uh, Business Insider.
What's the source? You think he's lying? You think he's making this up?
Wow, $38 billion in one year.
So, so one thing I loved is I—
sale of Costco's Kirkland Signature product will open in 9 months.
Okay, and that's just Kirkland.
Kirkland crazy. So I, I listened to her on a podcast, Tina Sharky, I think is her name. And she's like an internet OG. She'd been around with a bunch of companies, um, all of which I think have not done super great. But she went on this podcast, she said this thing that I liked, which was, she was like, think back to when you were a child and like, let's walk from room to room. You're in the laundry room. What brand are you gonna see? You're gonna see whatever, you know, Tide, you're gonna see whatever. Go to the pantry. What are you gonna see? You're gonna see Fruit Roll-Up and, uh, Pop-Tarts and all this stuff. And then open up your fridge. What are you gonna see? And you see these brands and actually it's kind of like, You've seen these stats where the S&P 500 turns over, like, I don't know, 20% of the S&P 500 turns over every decade. Basically the same thing happens with these household brands, these brands that seem like staples of your home, right? A lot of them are like, like Minute Maid. It's like, fuck Minute Maid, you're out. Like, you know, now, you know, Tang. Yeah, Tang. You know, like these brands just like, like they are not—
they can come and go generationally.
They don't all make it from one mom to the next mom. And I actually believe that premise. And she was like, look, the moms of this generation, they don't want to pay for this, like, the consumer package good brand in the same way. They want to know it's high-quality ingredients sourced, you know, ethically. And, you know, they don't want to overpay. They want to be, you know, value-conscious. So I liked a lot of the premise. I'm sad it didn't work. But somebody— I believe, I believe you should just go out today and pitch I'm Brandless without SoftBank. And I think I would, I would invest in an incredible entrepreneur. I agree with you.
I think I I had 3 people reach out to me that said, hey, can you ask, can you introduce me to the people who are selling Brandless? I mean, I don't know them, but I just tweeted it and I got an intro and I introduced 3 different people who are wanting to buy the assets.
And what are the assets? What are you getting? You get the name?
Maybe some inventory, probably. Okay. The name and, uh, an email list. And then unfortunately, probably a bunch of incompetent team. I mean, right. No disrespect, but look, if they couldn't pull it off, they're, by definition.
Well, you'll need to restart for sure, right? You'll need a clean slate and you need to lower the burn.
Yeah, um, I think it's cool. I would probably charge a mem— do they do membership?
They did a subscription because they started off with everything was $3. I forgot to mention that. That was like a key selling point.
Like, dude, I think everything's $3. Look like $3 store. And people say the CAC was too high, that it cost too much to acquire customers. That's probably true, but like Wish is doing it.
Yeah, you know, I don't know the economics, but this brings up an interesting half-baked idea, um, we got a DM from your friend about like businesses that are in the spot Brandless is in where they're doing essentially a close down slash fire sale. And you want to share the idea that— that— which one? Narendra shared this good idea this morning.
Yeah, that was a great idea. Okay, so we actually should bring this guy in. I have an investor and a good friend of mine. I cold emailed him and we became friends. He invested. He started a company called Webshots, and I think he sold it for $80 million and then he bought it back. For pennies and then sold it again for $20 or $30 million and then now has bought it back again. And he was like, you guys, uh, or you know what, something would be interesting is if you could be like a graveyard or an unwinding service.
Undertaker.
An undertaker where you can just buy these dying things. And that exists.
It's a service to basically wind down your company. You take a fee and you do the sort of fire sale. And I'm sure there's services out there like this, but somebody could specialize in tech companies wind down both— you have talent, you have hardware, you have, uh, you know, assets that you're trying to fire sale off. And then you have all the normal business closing stuff you got to do so you don't get like taxes next year, um, because you have to actually shut down your company officially. And nobody wants to do that. It's not fun. And investors want to make sure that that process is done with no like funny business so that they like maximize the value.
And this kind of reminds me of something that I wanted to bring up, which is I think that now that private companies are staying private for long and not going public as much, what I think needs to happen is I think the venture capitalists, a lot of VC firms need to start buying companies and just need to own them for the cash flow versus wanting something to go public or get bought. And so what I think is going to happen is I think a lot of these VC firms are almost going to turn into hedge funds or private equity funds. We're going to start— they're going to buy and operate a lot more than they are now. And that's related to that.
So I don't think VCs will do it, but the sort of new age VCs that are going to be hybrids. So like Andreessen Horowitz shifted their model where they're not a VC, they're now a— I forgot what it's called, but like they wanted to be able to just own cryptocurrency, just buy and hold it and do other things. So they needed to reclassify. And then this guy Chamath, he basically has a fund called Social Capital. It started off as a traditional VC fund and then like he had to restart it for all kinds of reasons. But one of the things he does now is he has this thing called a SPAC, which is his special purpose vehicle for taking companies public. So you're a company, you don't want to go public, he's already public, and he just acquires a stake, you know, a stake in your company, I believe, is how the mechanics work. So they just did this with Virgin Galactic, and so it's like a fast track to being public and getting that liquidity without having to go and be, you know, your own independent listing.
Yeah, I'm into that. I know Andrew Wilkinson's probably listening. He owns tiny capital, and they do— they've been doing this. Uh, the companies that they own collectively, I think, do about $100 million in revenue, and he, I think, takes dividends and buys companies with the cash flow, right? And, uh, it's an awesome model.
But a lot of these companies like Brandless, there's no cash flow, right? It's going to be a cash sink. It's one of these go big or go to zero, and in this, in this case, it went to zero.
Yeah, but it doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be, but, um, it's also that is also valid, right? Like to do the— do what like Jet tried to do, which is like, you know, they never made their core business work, sold for $3 billion because they, they went for the plow money in today, try to get the scale and then be the first to have scale doing what we do. You know, it's a, it's a model.
No, I'm into it.
What's the other one you want to talk about?
Credit cards? We can mention it just for a second, but—
Ramp. Ramp Capital, right? Ramp. What's Ramp something? It's based out of New York. It's Brex, but from New York, right?
Yeah, I'm into it. It launched today. Okay, so I went— my company, we do, let's say, 8 figures a year in revenue. We have 7 figures in cash. I have been using one big bank for a long time, and to get us to raise our credit card limit from $30,000 to $80,000 was a nightmare.
Oh my God.
A nightmare. Yeah. I had to go meet them in person 2 or 3 times. I had to show them my personal Sam Parr's tax returns. It was stupid. I signed up to Brex and I got 300 or 400, some hundreds of thousands of dollars in like 12 hours. Yeah. Awesome. And I told these guys and like, yeah, we can't compete with that. They basically admitted it. And I go, okay, well, this conversation is over. Thank you. So I really like this new business credit card space and I'll explain how I think they're making money. But Ramp just launched and what they're going to do, what they said they're going to do is They're going to analyze all your credit card spending and they'll tell you where repetitive purchases are coming through. And I actually mentioned this on the podcast 3 months ago. I was like, I'm telling you that businesses are wasting so much money by buying multiple subscriptions of things. And I think something amazing can be built by helping you save a little bit of money. Right. That's what this is.
That's like a side feature they have. That's not the main feature is the same like Brex, right? Like it's like here's a business credit card.
Well, that's how they're differentiating. Brex's advertising says we will get you better rewards. Right.
And this is— we'll save you money. Yeah.
And I think it's cool. And I'm really bullish on those things. And I think the way they work is whenever, whenever a customer— when I have my credit card and I go and buy something, the merchant pays a 4% fee. And what Brex does is they go to Mastercard and they go, hey, you guys are getting 4% fee for all this stuff. Give us a cut of that and we'll create more credit card users.
Right.
And I think that's how they're making money. I'd imagine.
I think so. I don't know. I don't know for certain, but fintech companies are very interesting. We should— I know a couple of guys are deep in fintech, we'll bring them on.
A lot of people are not deep into that. And a lot of people like Wealthfront and Betterment, a lot of people hate those, like buyers, right? I don't know how they're ever going to get bought. I don't know who would buy them.
We'll see. All right. What else we got up here?
Let's see. I feel like, Sean, when we come for the last few times, I've been the one doing all the research, and I have a feeling that you're the one who's done all the research.
I did some research this time. So first, follow up on last time I was talking about corporate universities. I'm going to keep talking about anything education because I just love it.
I had a lot of people reach out to me about that.
Really? Okay. So I went back to my notes. I already had these notes, but I just wanted to mention a couple of them. So Hamburger U, that's the McDonald's one. 19 full-time professors. I thought that was interesting. There's— I don't know how you say this— Crotonville. That's from General Electric. So Kaiser just opened up their own med school, which I find really interesting because it's what— that's exactly what I was talking about, where you want your own pipeline of doctors, so you create your own med school. Then some companies do it more like training. Apple University, Deloitte University. I think those are more like just a training program so you can be a better employee. That's, that's different. Another one that I thought was interesting, so we talked about Zoho. So Zoho has their own university, and the graduates of that make up 15% of their workforce. Oh shit. Which is pretty insane.
So 100— they have about 1,000, maybe they have more than 1,000 people.
I'm not sure exactly how many total that is. The Google IT Support Certificate has 75,000 graduated students, which is pretty crazy. So I think this is gonna be a big trend.
So where's the opportunity? To be a company that can create these education?
So I think what you can do is, so there's these companies that are called, what the hell are they called? I know one is called 2U or something like that. That's the name of one of their companies. So there's a set of companies that what they're doing is they say, hey university, hey Berkeley, you should have an online degree. And for years universities were not so interested in this, and then they saw how much money gets made by online degrees, and so they were like, Okay, we'll take that money. And so they don't want to, you know, Berkeley doesn't want to have to sit there and build out an online degree portal that has like the technology, the service, acquire students. Like Berkeley doesn't know how to do any of that shit. Right. So these, there's a couple, there's 3 big companies that basically go to these universities and they say, hey, do you want to offer an online degree? We think it brings this much incremental revenue to your university. And, um, we will run the whole thing for you. So you don't have to lift a finger. And, uh, here's the, but we want, you know, 30% of the, of the tuition revenue. And, uh, right. So what happened is all the universities said yes. So there's a billion-dollar company that's doing this, uh, that basically offers this to all the universities. So there's, if you go look, all these, you know, traditional universities now have an online degree or certificate, like certificate program that they offer. And it's run by these other companies. I forgot the name of what these companies are called. It was like some generic term, but I think you could be that for corporations. And so, um, I think you could go to a corporation and say, hey, would you like to basically have your own, you know, developer bootcamp or, um, University for, you know, essentially we're gonna pop out people who are like management consultant types, and it's good for your brand to get students early, and anytime you hire one of them, we take essentially a recruiter fee, and we'll run the whole thing for you. And so I think that's one way you could take advantage of this trend.
So VaynerMedia does this thing called 3Ds, or I don't know what it's called, something like that, and it's $10,000, and you go to their office for a day, and you learn how their business operates, So if you're an agency owner, you get to hang out with Gary Vaynerchuk for an hour, but then they also have like the head of each department for an hour and they come in and they explain how their companies are run. So Tucker, who's on here, he is thinking about doing the same thing as well, where users can pay a fee and they can come in and, um, see how the company operates.
So Book in a Box itself is a little bit different. Book in a Box is you want to write a book. There's a book in a box. We're going to help you write it, promote it. Do the COVID work, all that stuff. And they do this for like high-profile business type of people who want to have their own book. Right. And that business does good. It's a good business.
Yeah. He bootstrapped it. They have a, he, he was telling me, he was like, Amazon's going to buy us for so much money. That's what, like the joke that he has said.
So who knows? And what they want to do, which is different, which is talking about what our idea is, give you exposure inside these companies to the leadership of these companies. Is that it? Yeah, like take you on corporate tours.
Yeah, because Book in a Box, what they're famous for is, uh, their culture is really good.
Like their own company culture?
Yeah. Interesting. And so that's— and we thought about doing it as well. I mean, we're not big enough that we have something to offer, but it's kind of a cool idea is where like I would do it for other companies. I would pay money to see like if Barstool did a thing where you could see how they're— how they operate their business, I would pay money and go Right. And VaynerMedia, if you guys want to research this, if you want to, like, if you think that your company is special and people would pay money to do it, to see how big Vayner's is, they put all of their events on Eventbrite and you could see which, how many tickets they're selling per event. And so you can actually reverse engineer this and see how much revenue it's bringing in.
I like it.
Hold on, we have a guest.
Hey, how's it going?
We have a special guest. We're recording right here. Dude, come on in. How are you? You're gonna say hi on the camera. Nice to see you. So we have a special guest. We're recording right here.
So if you're listening to this, you don't have video, um, Lance Armstrong just walked in as he does, uh, you know, at certain times.
So we have this podcast here. Yep, every day, 3 days a week at this point. It feels like every day, right? Well, our goal is to get to 100,000 daily listeners.
Yep, per episode.
Per episode.
Push a button and get 100,000 earballs, right?
Right. And we're doing a good job. Yeah, we're getting close.
Good.
I bet you are.
You have a big, big following.
I'm sure you have a big following. And so the backstory behind this podcast is— and now we're doing videos and we're chopping it up like you do with the Forward— the Forward— the Forward and the Move.
So there's the second one, this, you know, yeah, the tour one's called the Move.
What we've been doing— so Sean had a company that he just sold to Twitch, and I've got companies, and all we've been doing is scheming out loud. And for some reason people love listening to it. It's been working. Um, and we have like, everyone's messaging us saying they're starting little things that we've been riffing on. Good.
And we just— listen to any podcast or you make the content, don't listen?
Uh, I'd listen to a few. I, you know what, I, I kind of get, I do get, I'll occasionally listen to Rogan if it's, if it's a guest that I'm interested in.
The whole thing or the clips?
No, it's, he goes long, man.
3 hours.
3 hours. I'm like, When I did it, he was like— I was like, so how long do you think I'll be here? He's like, uh, 3 hours. I was like, what? I've never talked to anybody for 3 hours. Like, no, I'm not talking for 3 hours. I'm, I'm not that interesting. But, uh, yeah, no, so I'll get into these crime ones.
Me too, me too.
I got sucked into this, uh, Root of Evil. Yeah, that was just super fucked up.
I've been listening to that one.
Do you have the 12 Hours Afterwards? We have to Google and like follow up and be like, okay, I need to know even more.
No. Yeah. You're trying not to. And then what was the other one that was, um, oh, it was just serial killers.
You know that one?
No, but they're all about serial killers, right?
No, there's one called Serial Killers. Yeah. And it's awesome. WeCrashed about WeWork, kind of crime. I listened to all those ones as well. Wow. The Wondery and Parkcast.
Yeah.
Yeah. Um, and they just, one of them, one of those companies just sold to, uh, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify. Yeah. A couple hundred million bucks. So did The Ringer.
The Ringer. Bill Simmons just keeps making money.
Yeah, apparently. I think he owned— I bet you he owned the majority of that company. Wow. So he probably walked away with a couple hundred million bucks.
Good for him. Um, we got to get you off the LaCroix. Have you seen the Austin?
This is mine. I just leave them here.
Have you seen the new brand out of Austin?
Waterloo? What's Waterloo?
It's, it's like a sparkling water, but it's better.
So this is what the podcast—
I'm an investor, full disclosure.
Okay, well, this is what the podcast is.
No, but they're crushing it.
They just have that scheme. So what is it?
It's a, it's, look, what is it? It's sparkling water, but it's, it's our Austin office buys it. Yeah, I'm sure they do. I mean, it's all the rate. Well, from the Austin office, it's on their, their HQ is on, is on, is on East Cesar Chavez as well. So from, from where the hustle is, or at least where it's always not moved, we moved into a bike shop.
Yeah.
We're, we're on East 7th now.
Okay. So you guys used to be on, on Cesar Chavez, you moved up, but so they're still on Cesar Chavez, which is where our studio is. But no, they're just, they're cool guys, they're killing it, you know.
How much did they raise?
They just did a new round, it's like $30 they raised, I want to say. I'm probably getting that wrong, but they did $50 million in sales last year, they're gonna do $100 this year. Holy shit. No, they're, they're knocking. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's lighter, cleaner. The can has— they have all these different—
yeah, they're the ones with the cool looking cans. Like, it's like pastel, or, uh, it's like a white—
well, they have a lot of flavors now, it's probably up to 10 or 12, but it's like a retro looking can.
It's retro looking.
Yeah, it's real sort of groovy looking, and they brought in the guy that ran Smart Pop and sold that off, and so he's the CEO. So they got real—
Austin has a lot.
Kavu Ventures is the big—
Who?
Kavu Ventures out of Austin.
That's the guy from the vodka company? Is that the tea?
So he, Clayton, was from Deep Eddy. He did Sweet Leaf Tea, Deep Eddy, and then went and started Kavu with two other guys. He's now since left, but anyways, he's still on the board at Waterloo and Hi Brew Coffee, which is a big advertiser of ours.
Do you like investing? It's kind of boring. No, I love—
what do you mean what's wrong with it? It's boring? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with this guy? He doesn't like making money. You know, there's probably, there's probably some charity right down the street where you could go give them all your dough from Twitch and give them all your time.
You know, investing sounds fun and the initial pitch is fun. Yeah, but once you give them the check, it gets very boring to me because, uh, you're so hands-off.
And I like it.
I like being a part of creating stuff, dude.
It's like being an uncle. You get all the fun stuff and not only the work.
I see. We—
that's actually a good analogy. I'm trying to convince you that's a good analogy.
Being an uncle is the best.
So yeah, I mean, we, we, we launched a fund and we almost, you know, probably 90% of the companies were super involved with.
In what way?
Well, either through the board or being on the board, or, or, or just, um, they just need help. I mean, you know this. I mean, young entrepreneurs, they might have a great idea and, and be smart people, but they're going to come across things they just need help navigating and, and, and, or, uh, connecting them. I mean, with—
in our Once I went to pitch an investor, Founders Fund, and Founders Fund's like a top fund or whatever, and he offered us a term sheet. And I asked him, I said, you know, we have this other capital source right now, like self-funded by like my business partner. We could just keep self-funding or we could take this. I said, you tell me, like, you know, how much value add do you guys really bring? And I'm ready to hear like the sales pitch. And he goes, honestly, the worst companies need the most help and I can't save them. The best companies never need my help. And so, and then there's everybody else in between.
Yeah.
And here, if I'm giving you this term sheet, I hope you're one of those that are the good companies that I really don't have any influence in. I just get to take credit in the end. And I was like, I dig that honesty. That's true to me. The best companies truly, like, like I've only made a couple of investments, but Lambda School is probably the best one. It's done pretty well. And you know that one, I'm like a needy girlfriend, you know, they're like one of the hot Silicon Valley companies doing super super well. And, you know, I'll text the founder to be like, hey, what's up? You want to jam on ideas? You want me to help you with this problem? And he's like, dude, I'm just busy with all this fucking growth.
I hate when people— I hate when investors ask what I need.
You don't need anything. And I'm like, oh, this is what it feels like when you're winning, uh, when you're really, really winning and you just are too busy for any of this bullshit.
Yeah, we won't tell Neil when he gets here.
Well, I— what I do is I send monthly updates and they're very clear and succinct and I'm very transparent. And they're like, how can I help? I'm like, you can't unless you have ideas and you can tell me how help do it, but I don't— I, I can't think of anything. Yeah, like, it's like, I don't know, how can you help? You're on your way, you know what I mean? It's like, what are you gonna come in here and write emails for me and do work for me? I mean, like, I don't know. They're like, you need intros to anyone? I'm like, who do you know? I don't know.
Well, that's— I mean, I think the intro part is big in our world. And so, you know, in health and wellness, fitness, nutrition, I mean, it's, it's, you know, it— I've been doing this for 30 years just as an athlete, so I've gotten to know everybody. I mean, if, if we make an invest— these are just examples— but if we make an investment in a company like AMP Human, and they need, uh, and it'd be very obvious that they'd be connected to Strava and vice versa. It would take 'em a month to get a call.
I think you're different though.
Yeah.
That's your— well, thank you, Sam.
Well, that's your value is that—
well, that's our value.
Yeah. Everyone knows that you know everyone. I mean, you're a celebrity. Like you could get in touch with everyone, but like if, you know, I, I'm an investor, you're an investor, it's like they don't know who I know.
Yeah.
And I probably don't know that many people who they can't just cold email.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. You need it to be unique.
Is that what your angle is going to be, is that you have—
there's that, and we call it— I mean, we, we refer to it as the flywheel, just because, you know, now the one show, uh, the second show, The Move, is about 15 million downloads a year. And so, you know, once that started to really take off, then I, I was getting all this interesting deal flow. I thought to myself, we should start a fund and invest in some of these companies. And, and then what happens when we reintegrate, or occasionally integrate some of our companies back into that audience, right? That core sticky group of 15 million people. That's what we bring to it. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I mean, there is the connections, there is the flywheel, there's the audience, and then we got a pretty kick-ass advisory board that we pull into, whether it's, you know, researching deal flow or, or sitting on boards.
Um, so, um, so you were doing a thing— so we've talked about hotels out here for— or I've been riffing on hotels. I'm really interested in hotels because they're growing. Like, the biggest hotels, the top 10, they're growing at a really high clip right now because young people are doing experiences more. Um, you— George Hincapie has this thing called the Domestique, and, uh, you were doing a ride there where someone could pay, uh, a fee and hang out with you for 2 days.
Well, we call it a camp.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
It's probably 4 days of riding.
Right. And something that's been interesting us, me and I've been bringing up, is hotels that offer more experiences. Yeah. And so it could be as small as being filled with Peloton bikes. Yeah. Which I have found myself going to more hotels just because they have a high quality gym. Are you— did you see that his hotel or the Domestique, did it get increased bookings because of that? Because of that camp that we sold? Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's an inch— his hotels, it's only, I think, 12 or 13 rooms, so it's pretty easy to fill up. So if we announce— and he and I are doing the same thing in Mallorca in September, but at a separate hotel, but obviously, um, but when we announce that camp, it just kind of fills up, you know. It would— it'd be a different jam if it was a 200-room hotel, um, and that's his problem, right? He can either sell— he either has one room full or two rooms, or he could sell 200 rooms, right? 13 is a tough number.
I would love for that to happen. I wrote an email to you one time. I was like, you need to become the Jimmy Buffett of weekend warriors, right? And you need to have a hotel where people could come and—
dude, I mean, Jimmy's— he's branded everything, whether it's blenders. He's doing nursing homes now.
Jimmy Buffett is? Yes.
So I mean, he's got— I mean, when I talk about Jimmy Buffett, I mean, if you think about a Jimmy Buffett fan, like a Parrot Head, right? So if it's the day of the show in Dallas, Texas, which I say that because that's my mom and stepdad go every time, from the minute they wake up, he's owning them, right? They're listening to SiriusXM, they're listening to his station, right? Probably at some point pregame, they're drinking his beer, the Landshark beer. Then they, then he, they buy the ticket, which is again his. They get to the show, they're buying his swag, they go back, or they pregame, they, they like pregame or tailgate out there. They're using his margarita blender. He's got everything.
Yeah, and he has a— then he has a hotel, he's got the— and then his clothes, right? I mean, why is Lance Armstrong not the Jimmy Buffett of Weekend Warriors?
Well, hotel, Jimmy, Jimmy, I don't know if you paid attention the last 7 or 8, you know, we're getting back there.
But oh, it could happen, I'm telling you. Yeah, I like what the world that, that I want to live in is like I can— like these UFC—
cannabis, he's all into cannabis.
Yeah, the, uh, the coral reefer. That's what it's called.
That's what it's called, the coral reefer.
These UFC guys are kind of doing it where you could pay money and go and work out with them and live at their gym.
Yeah, man. Laird Hamilton's doing it. You know, I did for a sec, and I did— no, the answer's no. I just—
I don't know.
That's how you can think of it, or this is not worth the sort of I just, I just didn't, I don't know, it didn't feel right.
Because I think that's the thing, right? Like, do you want to, like, how much of yourself and your time do you want to spend?
Yeah, how much do you think Jimmy Buffett spends on that?
At least easy, it's on your phone.
I wouldn't do Cameo. That's how you could tell which celebrity is broke, by how much they're, how much they're—
see, that's probably the reason I stopped.
You're like, oh, this guy said it, dude, this guy's charging fucking right. Like, Gilbert, Gilbert Gottfried is charging $50 for a 2-minute slot. This guy's He's broke, by the way.
That's his excuse.
Nice, nice, uh, nice people. I talked to them, you know, when I— they were great.
But no, but you're doing well. But yeah, but like, it is more reality TV, YouTubers, Viners.
It's like Uncle Joey from Full House is really hurting. He's only charging $50 for a 3-minute spot. Like, he's broke. I feel this is horrible. Whereas Snoop is charging $2 grand. He's the one who's doing good.
No, something like that. Yeah. I got TJ Lavin from—
Thousand was the max.
Yeah. Or whatever. He's the max. I got TJ Lavin to say hi to my wife for like $100.
It's a great gift.
I don't even know who that is.
He's like on the Real World. He's the host of the challenge. It's stupid.
Former BMX guy.
Uh, the more they charge, the more broke they are, or less.
If they charge a little bit of money, then they're really hurting.
And I set mine high and I, it was just, you know, it was too—
people are going to—
why would, why would anybody pay that?
I would pay.
Can I— I thought Neil and I were going to go have lunch.
Oh yeah, well, let's—
you eating lunch with us or you gonna keep podcasting?
I'm gonna wrap up here in a few minutes.
Yeah, we got food here. Thanks for having me.
We were just kidding. Yeah, well, we're making—
yeah, that was fun.
I don't know what's gonna happen with this.
Yeah, this podcast is gonna be interesting.
It's gonna either be great or not great. Like one or the other, right?
Okay, not gonna be in the between. So, okay, so are you gonna wrap up? Because if you want to wrap up, we can— we can either do 2 minutes of more stuff We can do 2 minutes.
I don't know what—
can you pull up the sheet again? Because it's got like email on there.
This was a crazy— so if it matters, I mean, this is what our office is like. We do get a lot of cool people coming by.
Yeah.
The guy that Lance was with, the gentleman you maybe just saw on camera, his name is Neil Dempsey. He won't ever tell me this. I'm pretty sure Neil's a billionaire and Neil's one of my investors. And Neil, we'll have—
We'll have him We'll have him on the podcast sometime, but basically he was in his— he was trying companies and kept failing. And up into his late 30s, early 40s, he was failing, failing, failing. He got a job at a VC and met this guy starting a coffee shop, brought to the VC. Everyone laughed at him. They said, no, we're not investing, this is stupid. So Neil invested his own personal money into it, and that company ended up being Starbucks. And so Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, says that Neil's one of the people he looks up to, and he's One of my investors, they named the stadium, one of the stadiums at Washington, in Washington. Is it Washington University or University of Washington? They named it. It's called Dempsey Stadium because he donated. And so he's a big deal. That's cool.
This is— that's legit.
Our office.
That's a great story. Wow. How to follow that. Okay.
I think that we should probably kind of wrap it up and hope that there is some value in here for people.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let me, let me toss out one idea. 'cause we owe people ideas, and let me toss out one good idea. Um, which one? Okay, I'm gonna do the, I'm gonna do the one I started. So I started off talking about, okay, these meetings are, are, are meetings, or meetings basically are like the, the bread and butter of big companies. And so I calculated, we have on, on every floor, we have like, I don't know, 20 meeting rooms, say, and 9 floors. So let's call it 10 floors. There's 200 meeting rooms. And, uh, every hour, let's assume, I don't know, 80% of it is occupied. So I basically did the math and saw how many hours, and then you think Oh, every meeting has on average 5 people in it. And so you start to realize how many people hours are spent in meetings. And then when you look at a meeting, uh, while it's happening, there's basically no technology. So the only technology in a meeting is like video conferencing typically. Um, and I think that's kind of crazy. And so I actually believe, um, that there's someone out there who could build a meeting, a meeting kit of some kind that makes meetings more, um, more effective, more efficient. And I'm not talking about like transcribing, although that's one possibility. What I'm thinking about more is like the ability to give give, um, so I'm imagining like a physical device and, um, you push it, uh, when you want to say something. So this doesn't reward interrupters and loud voices because you sort of buzz in when you're ready to talk. So it just has a little light next to your thing that says, Sean, sounds like you have something.
I would end it at the memo thing. That alone is worth it.
Well, the memo doesn't require any— like, there's no business there, right? Like, companies just adopt that principle.
I think it's wrong, and here's why I think it's wrong, is Axios is coming out with this, and there was another new product called Recess that just launched. And all it is is a software SaaS, so it's a service. You pay money and you get this internal emailing tool that helps you write internal emails better to your company, and it tells you who read it and who didn't.
So it's more concise, or what does it help? Yeah, because Axios is super concise as is. Yeah, I think basically I think that there's a meeting tech that will sound really boring, But if you just think about how much of business happens in meetings, how many hours, how much salary is spent every hour in these meetings, if you could make a 10% lift in how good the communication was or how well that meeting ran, uh, that's a big, big lift. And I don't think anybody's really, uh, doing much interesting stuff there. I think people only really worry about like, how do you schedule the meeting and how do you conference into the meeting?
There's a lot of money built just on running the meetings. And yeah, those are successful.
Uh, but I think the meeting itself could use, uh, some improvement anyway. So, uh, trying to throw in an idea here, but this will be known as the Lance Armstrong podcast.
Yeah. We'll actually get him in here in real time. This, I hope that people will get value from this. I think we should publish this, but we'll apologize that it's only I maybe. Yeah. Um, and we have a ton of ideas to go through for tomorrow. Uh, you, you have a few on here that I'm like, what you're curious about? Yeah. Yeah.
So we'll, we'll get some tomorrow.
All right. Tomorrow. Um, Peace out. Thank you. Leave reviews and DM me on Twitter because I'll respond.
Talk soon.