Pomp Shares 3 Non-Obvious Business Ideas with Massive TAMs
Um, well, I guess we're live. Pomp, do you, do people ever introduce you by your real full name? Are you just, are you, are you Pomp at all times?
Um, yeah, some people do, but, uh, people get offended if I go to a conference and I introduce myself as Anthony and then later they're like, wait, you're Pomp? Like, Who knows you as Anthony? Like, well, that is, you know, my name. My parents did name me that.
Well, then we're going to keep you as Pom. We have Pom here. Pom, you've been on the pod a handful of times and we've talked about you a handful of times and we've been on your pod a handful of times. And so it's nice to have you back. Congratulations on new family member. Uh, and you're here recently after doing it. So we appreciate that.
Yeah, of course. Just, uh, just 3 dads hanging out on the internet. Who could have guessed?
I had a good joke that I didn't get to do the other day when Sam Altman was in the news. And then like, it's like Jack Altman comes out and says something and then Max Altman comes out and says something. Then his sister Annie Altman comes out. I'm like, how many fucking Altmans are there? There's more Altmans than Pomplianos now. What's happening here? Because I feel like you have like brothers coming out the woodwork as well. Do you feel that your, you know, your sibling dominance is threatened in any way by the Altmans right now?
I did see people making that joke and I did Google how many almonds there are and they are not more almonds than poplianos. So we're safe for the moment.
What, I don't even know how to describe you. So I think a lot of our listeners will know who you are, so we don't have to spend that much time, but like you started out as like kind of a one-trick pony. You're just basically the guy on Twitter who talked about Bitcoin, but now you've evolved significantly beyond that. So you've got like the Pomp media empire, but then you've also like started, I don't even know how many businesses, many though.
Hold on, Sam, can we do an analogy? Uh, you know, Pomp going from Bitcoin laser eyes to real estate and all kinds of other shit that he's doing now. Is it, uh, is this Justin Timberlake from NSYNC now going solo? Justin Timberlake, you know, what's the, what's the right analogy here? Who, who has made such a transition, such a life pivot like this? Is there anyone that's done this in Hollywood?
Well, here, here's the thing is it's not really a pivot if you kind of expand out off of the internet, right? So if you think about, I started my career building companies, then I went and I worked at Facebook, then I started investing. And then once I was investing, that's really where kind of the Bitcoin stuff happened. But even the stuff on the internet, I worked directly with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for a short period of time at Facebook when they were trying to figure out how do they grow their audiences on Facebook. I remember early on when Fuck Jerry, the Instagram account, they were trying to go from Instagram and figure out what's their Facebook strategy. And so the reason why I say that is like, I don't know, think of like a Kim Kardashian. She goes from like sex tape to reality TV star to like entrepreneur billionaire to now like criminal justice reform to I think she's going to be president of the United States one day. And you look at that and you're like, actually the same thing that makes the sex tape go viral gets you elected to be president today. So like in some ways it's actually the exact same skillset, just, you know, packaged up in a different way and with different ambitions or aspirations.
You have this really good job of like brute forcing yourself into like interesting networking opportunities. So like, I feel like, I think Sean is actually better at this than I am, but like, I just hang out with a small crew of just like internet nerds. You've done a really good job of like meeting actual big shots, I think, right? I mean, like you, I don't even know all the people you know, but you were telling me how you met Julian Robertson, who's the guy who started Tiger Man— or is it Tiger Management?
Tiger Management.
But you, you actually like you, and then you just, you weren't trying to, but you just name dropped Zuck. And I think you've worked for Snapchat and hung out with Evan a bunch. You've done a really good job of like meeting all these like crazy fascinating people. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just like if you're a curious person, other curious people want to be around those types of folks. And then also, I probably more so than many of my friends say yes to opportunities even when it's not very clear, like what is the purpose for doing this? And so if you do that enough times, like it's just kind of like shots on goal, like you will meet some of these fascinating or successful people. But each one of them is very different. I mean, Julian Robertson, that story is, Mark Yusko, who started Morgan Creek Capital Management, we did a joint venture with him to raise a couple of venture capital funds. And Mark was this former CIO of the UNC Endowment back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. And at that time, Julian Robertson was kind of like in his heyday, right? This was like hedge funds were really getting off the ground. Mark Yusko and UNC had a really big hand in getting endowments specifically to invest in these hedge funds. And Julian Robertson was on his board. So that's how Mark and Julian met. Now, as Mark would tell the story, eventually Julian was like, hey, this kid Chase Coleman, who now runs Tiger Global, he's leaving. I'm going to give him some money. And he sent him down to go talk to Mark. And Mark gave like the 6th and 7th million to Chase Coleman to start Tiger Global. Now, when you look at that, you're like, okay, Mark Yusko and Julian Robertson had known each other for 20 or 30 years. In, I think it was 2019, Mark calls me up one day and he's like, hey, now's the time. Like we're going to go meet a bunch of like the legends of Wall Street. And one of them was Julian. Julian was actually the first stop of the day. And so the things I remember from it is like, one, you kind of feel like you're going to meet a legend. So like more so than usual, you're like nervous but excited. And we walk in and he's had the same office for a number of years. He had 3 secretaries, which I thought, first of all, it's just like, that's baller. They all sat outside his office and like each had different responsibilities. So I was like, okay, like that's different. And mind you, Julian at this point is, I think like he's definitely in his 80s. And so we go in to see him and he sits down kind of in like this, like almost like living room area in his office. And he was the single most curious legend of Wall Street I've ever met. He sat with us for an hour and just kept berating me with questions and, and, and just trying to actually understand Bitcoin and blockchain technology and all these things. And you're just like, man, this guy does not have to be here right now. He does not have to be doing this stuff. Like he is rich on rich on rich. And he's also like pretty old. He's gotta know that like he doesn't have another 50 years to live, but he is sitting here trying to learn. And so about halfway through the conversation, all of a sudden you could see like, The proverbial like light bulb goes off in his head and he just sits back in his couch and looks up at the ceiling and like starts talking to the ceiling. And I remember being like, uh, damn, am I boring? Like, did I lose him? And he had a microphone in the ceiling and a speaker so he could talk directly out to the 3 like assistants. And he basically just started asking like, hey, send so-and-so in here. Like, go find this, whatever. And I was like, this guy like built like Jarvis in his office, like way before anyone else has this. He is absolutely a legend. So it was a really cool experience. Unfortunately, he passed away, but things like that are just, you know, once in a lifetime opportunities that are pretty cool.
And what I know about Julian, and maybe Sean, I don't know if this guy, if you ever researched this guy, so I'll explain to you, but also the listener, but Julian, he was, it was called Tiger, right?
I mean, it was just Tiger Management.
So he started like Tiger, which was revolutionary and made him worth, I don't even know how many billions.
It was revolutionary. Why? Because what did they do differently? They made good investments or did they actually do something different?
He's one of the very first true hedge funds, right? He basically was, hey, I'm not just going to do value investing. I'm a true hedge fund. And I think that he had a lot of what we all look at on the internet today and we're like, oh, that person's doing something interesting. It was different. He had high conviction. And he ended up being right. And so he was able to gather a lot of assets. He was able to drive a pretty good return and he did it at a time where this whole concept of like hedging or like going long and short wasn't necessarily the traditional way of investing. And so I don't know if they actually consider him like the godfather of hedge funds, but he basically could be considered that. And then, you know, the lore of Julian kind of expanded even more when a bunch of people who worked for him left. He would seed them, and when he would seed them to get them off the ground, those guys now known as Tiger Cubs became very successful. Tiger Global probably being the most successful. And so it was like, hey, he was good as an investor, but he was even better at like a talent, you know, kind of identifier and then seeding these people to create these great firms.
But it's way bigger. So Google Tiger Cubs Finance Wikipedia, and you could just go to the Wikipedia page. But they have sections where it's called Tiger Cubs, Tiger Grand Cubs, and Tiger Great Grand Cubs. And it's literally, it looks like if I'm just scrolling through, it looks like 100+ names. And I guess it's, he found these guys and he, because of his culture and because of kind of his vibe, they've all kind of taken a little bit of him. And it's some of the biggest names, like including that guy, what was the guy named Bill who had like that, who like brought down the economy?
Was it a, He unplugged Wall Street accidentally. He tripped over the cord and unplugged it.
Yeah. He brought down the economy through a couple bad bets. And then there's Chase Coleman, who is worth, I don't know, $20 billion, who has Tiger Man— who, what was it called? I'm getting all the names wrong. Tiger. And then you have like Couture. I can't even say these names. These are all names that— oh, juicy Couture.
Oh, wow. This guy's prolific, man.
He started Gucci.
Couture. These are— no, I know what you're saying. It's a word you've only read. You've never had to say out loud. Yeah, it's embarrassing. I was like, I just started reading this word. I don't know what the hell is this. What's her name? I have no idea how do you say this?
It's the words that you accelerate through. You just say them really quickly and hope no one noticed that you mispronounced them.
What attributes do you think, other than curiosity, did he have that kind of spread to all these other guys who have done— like, for example, Chase Coleman's an interesting one because you can't really— like, if you Google Chase Coleman, the guy's worth, I think, $15 billion, something in that range. There's like 4 pictures of him on the internet. Like what? And so these like mysterious guys are always, they're always fascinating. What attributes do you think some of these people have that started with Julian?
Yeah. So obviously I met Julian. There's a bunch of other folks that I've met over the years that kind of fall similar to Julian. And usually it is not, unfortunately, in a situation where I'm like, hey, I just want to learn from you. You're usually going to like ask them for something, whether it's for money, for an introduction or whatever. So like, The power dynamic is definitely off and it'd be weird to like sit there and be like, hey, by the way, now that the pitch is over, like, let me grill you for 30 minutes. But in those conversations, what you basically find is like, they're all very, very curious. Two is like, these guys just have like brass balls, right? Like, I don't even know how to describe it other than that. They are willing to just make insane bets at times when other people are not. You know, another person that maybe doesn't get the same fame or recognition as Julian, but I put up there as one of the best investors over the last 50 years is Bill Miller. And you know, Bill, in the late '90s, people were giving him shit because he said he was a value investor, but he started to buy tech stocks. And so obviously tech exploded. He was outperforming everybody. There's a book that I recently read where he was the only investor to outperform the S&P 500 for 10 years straight in the '90s. And so everyone was like, you're not a real value investor. And like, first of all, like it's stupid to be like, oh, you don't, your results don't count. 'Cause like you didn't actually do it the way you said you were going to do it. But Amazon was one of his big bets. And so Amazon crashes like 90% in the dot-com crash. Bill just backs up the truck and buys more. And I think at one point he was the single largest outside shareholder of Amazon and owned like 15%. And so you look at that and you're like, okay, one, like you have to like find Amazon. Two, then you have to like not get scared when it drops like 80, 90%. And then three is even if you're not scared, you then have to like hold your nose and put way more money in to buy it. All of this extra equity. And so I think that is a common theme. It's just conviction and the ability to just bet over and over again regardless of what's happening. And then the last one is these dudes are junkies, man. They're obsessed. I almost think of it like a gym rat. They not only are curious, but they do the work. And so in that book about Bill Miller, they talk about he was in Baltimore and he had seats behind home plate for the Baltimore Orioles. And he used to bring research reports and read them in the stands in between innings. And it's just like, okay, nerd, right? Like, that's insane. But also like, that's why you end up owning 15% of Amazon is because like you did the work. It doesn't happen by accident. And so I think that like, that's just a great example of all of these folks who've been super successful. Those are common themes that they all share.
That's intimidating, I think, right? Like to hear the stories, like what I want to, when I hear that, I get, I, my reaction is no more intimidated phrase than that's intimidating, I think, right?
I'm scared, right guys? No, you're right. And also I think the hard part is the line between genius and idiot is so thin. It's like, oh, am I Bill Miller backing up the truck when Amazon crashed 90%? Or am I just a fucking idiot putting all my money into a loser that like is showing it's a loser right now? And you know, that, uh, you know, the history is told years later. And so I think that's the hard part is you have to have not just conviction in the investment, you have to have conviction in yourself that I, despite the market conditions, despite the current results right now, am able to correctly differentiate between a winner and a loser. Um, if you don't have that conviction in yourself, you can't even make, you can't even have the conviction in an investment to pull that off.
Yeah, you're basically saying I'm smarter than everyone else, right? Like everyone else is selling this thing. Yeah. And I'm going to go buy it. And like, I mean, again, that's why they call them, you know, kind of like the masters of the universe in the hedge fund world is like the people who end up making a lot of money. They actually seem to be smarter than everyone else. Now, how many of those are there? Well, there's way less than the number of people who claim to be, you know, those masters of the universe. And that's, I think, Shawn, like the difference between the fools and the geniuses.
Well, I'll tell a story that's like that. My friend was in, he's in real estate and he was around, he was making his fortune, early fortune. He was like in his mid-20s, 2006, 2007, and then 2008 happens and he's gone from zero to $25 million in like 2 or 3 years. Thinks he's super smart and 2008 happens and he described it later. He's like, I, he's like, oh, there was like a tunnel. And everyone was running out like there was a fire on the other side of the tunnel. And they were running out and they were like, here, take this. And I was like, wow, they're just giving me this. This is amazing. This is way like, this price is fantastic. Is that I just kept marching forward and everybody else was running away screaming fire and handing me their assets on the way out. And yeah, it turns out I should have ran away from the fire because he lost everything in that '08 crash. Now, it's that same, you know, that same feeling would be there in the dot-com crash. Everybody's yelling fire, running away, selling things for pennies on the dollar. And you know, the difference I think ultimately comes down to, A, do you, can you tell yourself why you are buying something when everybody else is selling? Do you have a belief in this?
Right?
Like, you know, I heard somebody say once, I had somebody else who made a fortune during the dot-com crash and she goes, She goes, yeah, it was amazing. Everything was on sale. It was Black Friday. Everything was 80% off. I couldn't believe it. The best companies in the world were 80% off. And I don't know if they were going to return back to where they were then, but I just knew these are still the best companies in the world. And, you know, they're now 80% off. And so, you know, I think that there's, you hear stories on both sides and I think you just got to be careful that, you know, you don't want to be the guy running into the fire. And how do you differentiate? I think you have to have like, some ground truth that you believe that you're willing to stand on, you're willing to lose on. You're willing to look back and say, I'm okay if I'm wrong on this. I'm willing to lose the money I lost if it turns out that this idea was incorrect.
But when you guys hear those stories, is this like one of those things where you're watching a UFC fight and you're a little drunk and you're like, you know, I think I could maybe get a lucky punch and compete, you know what I mean? Or do you guys, hear this and you're like, I'm just not in the same league, or I don't even want to be. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you, do you, what, what's your reaction when you hear those stories?
I mean, I think it just depends on like this quote unquote circle of competence, right? You know, if you look back, there's only one time in my life where I've had the conviction, felt like I did the work and like really backed up the truck. And that was the Bitcoin stuff. And Bitcoin had gone from $1,000 to $20,000 in 2017. It crashed down to like $3,200. And I went on national television and I was like, basically, you guys are idiots. Like, this thing is going to come flying back. We're buying, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. We actually, one of my favorite memories has kind of gotten like lost in the internet archives is we issued a million-dollar bet to anyone on Wall Street and we were like, we'll take Bitcoin, you take any other asset, like just pick anything over the next 10 years. If you beat us, like you get a million bucks. If Bitcoin outperforms, we get a million bucks and no one took it. And so at some point you're just like, okay, that's enough of a signal that like people may not have conviction, but they also like know the person not to bet against. And I think like that's something in UFC is like, you may look at like a UFC card and you're like, okay, I think I know who's going to win like these 5, you know, matches, but that one match, I think I know who's going to win, but I'm not going to bet against the other person. So I'm like, sit that one out. I feel like a lot of times there's that level of conviction across the market. And so Amazon, You know, people knew it was like a pretty good company, but no one had the conviction to buy. Same thing with Bitcoin when it crashed. Like everyone was like, I think this is interesting, but like, I don't have the conviction to buy. So really it's less of a leap sometimes than people realize. But again, I've been doing this now for a decade. There's one time I can think of that I was like, oh yeah, I think I actually know something everyone else doesn't. Any other time I've even tried to think that way, I'm like, ah, I'm probably going to lose all my money. I should just, you know, sit down.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point. You have to identify that these things shouldn't be like once every month you have this grand new conviction bet. It's like maybe once in a decade that you see something that is so non-consensus, but you believe in. It's also hilarious. Did anybody consider taking you up on that deal? Were they just like, somebody walked into Tiger and they're like, sir, Tony Pompliano has offered a million-dollar bet. And they're like, I don't know, Tony. Uh, I'm out on that. Did anybody even like, did it register?
Like what, what happened? Do you want to know? Like CNBC wrote an article about it. Like it was like, it was definitely out there. Right. But here's the funny part about the whole thing. The people who were like, were even considering it were like all the like fools that just wanted like media coverage. So they were like trying to come up with these like weird, uh, um, you know, aspects of the deal. They're like, okay, I'll take your bet. But we have to take the return, divide it by 2, times it by like the number of times I jump on my head, you know, and then also I get a multiply and we're just like, dude, you're way too smart for us.
Obviously.
Like we just want a straight up bet. If you're interested in that, let us know.
Yeah. Also, they could have perfectly hedged that bet, I think, if they just bought Bitcoin in addition to making the bet. Right.
So like, yeah, I like to think we issued the bet before the smart people started paying attention. So like, yeah, we were good or somebody would have figured out how to definitely beat us on it.
Were you inspired by the Warren Buffett? Million S&P 500 bet. Is that where you took inspiration?
Of course. I think that that was one of the smartest things that he's done. Like Buffett's interesting because a lot of the advice that he gives, I think is pretty solid, circle of competence being one, kind of value investing, like all these things that we're kind of talking about here. I think very much draws back to Buffett and then obviously Graham and Dodd and all these guys. But he also is like a master marketer. Like Warren Buffett was the original finance influencer, right? And I've joked a million times that if he was today Buffett in his 30s, he'd have a Substack, a Twitter account, a podcast. He'd be streaming on TikTok, like doing all this stuff. And so he understood how to like leverage the tools he had at the time with the media. And so he didn't need to do it, but a way to really continue to drive like the lore of Warren Buffett is like issue the bet and say no hedge fund manager can beat the S&P over like a decade or whatever. We just talked about in the '90s, only Bill Miller did it, right? So it's very hard.
There was like a period where I remember I was like beating myself up even over this podcast where I was like, am I going to be a content creator or am I going to be a businessman who actually does the damn thing? And I started reading, you know, I read a lot of biographies and I actually started thinking about it differently. And you realize that a lot of these great people, whether in business or not, they actually had newsletters and they, like, I remember, what's the guy's name? Chamath, Chamath, like recently came out with like a newsletter and I remember thinking like, why the hell does this guy need to do this? Why is he doing this paid newsletter? But then, like Warren Buffett, his annual letters were basically newsletters. I mean, he wrote them as such. And then like, I remember reading about like Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin had a newspaper and he actually wrote constantly about this. I'm reading about George Washington, George Washington, constantly wrote editorials or Bill Ackman does this, you know, where he, he's like, he, he uses Twitter now, but before that he had some other things. And I remember thinking like, no, actually, like some of these greats who are great business people also are content producers. Uh, you know, maybe they're not, that's not their income source, but they, they really are like wonderful content people. You know what I'm talking about?
I like how you just used content producer. Content producer is nice. That's, that's better than content creator. Which is better than influencer. Actually, I think that's all that we need, guys, is like you just laid out. You're like, do I want to be a content creator, like an influencer or a businessman? And I think we actually just need to be content man. Like, I think we need to, like, we just need to level up the phrase so that we don't sound like little bitches when we, uh, it's like, oh, I'm a, I'm a content creator who tweets all day. It's like, no, no, no. You're a businessman. I'm a content man. We're just couple, couple of men, couple of producers.
Well, I remember one time we had this guest on and Sean asked this particular guest— this particular guest created courses, and Sean said something where Sean goes, you know, I create courses too, and sometimes I feel like a fraud because if I'm so good at this, instead of teaching it, I should just go and do it. And I thought that was a really good question, and this question really offended this person. But Sean, you didn't mean it to offend this person, and, and so I wasn't I did think that they should have been upset, but I also had that same, like, I'm like, well, that's, am I a fraud? But then you start thinking about it. Well, you know, Warren Buffett actually taught a Dale Carnegie course. He actually also taught a finance course. I forget at which university, but it's actually common that some of these people are teaching, are creating, and that has kind of helped me like feel like less, you know, like less embarrassed sometimes about what I do.
I think that you can go through tons of entrepreneurs, you can go through tons of, you know, kind of financial managers. This is very, very common. And there's a question of if you can't teach it, do you actually understand it?
Right?
Like, it's almost like a flip side to it. But if you really kind of just zoom out, you're like, okay, what is all this content stuff? I've been there, right? People would be like, oh, he has a podcast. And I used to be like, cringe. It was like somebody like stabbed me in the stomach and twisted it when they would introduce me that way. Right? And I'm like, You are disrespecting all this other work that I did to say that I have a podcast. Like, yes, I have a podcast, but also like I wear shoes. Are you going to introduce me as like, oh, Pop wears shoes? And so I remember, uh, kind of going back and like thinking about like, wait a second, dude, it's, it's, it's, it's like calling, um, milk cat food.
You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's cat food. Yeah. It's like, that's not totally fair.
So what you eventually realize is like, it's just marketing. Right at the end of the day, like it really is just marketing and whether it's Twitter, whether it's podcasts, whatever, the people who tend to be good at it don't think of it and like sit down and like create a marketing calendar. Like, I don't know, they're like taking a poop and they pull out their phone and they start tweeting like random things and like they go viral, right? At the end of the day, it's just marketing. And so in some weird way, maybe we all shouldn't like be ashamed or cringe when people say that stuff. Like if you're better known for how good you are at marketing, Like maybe that's actually telling you something, right? And so I think it's, uh, we all have that as almost like a, uh, something that eats at us or it's like an insecurity, but whatever, who cares? Like if they could do it, they'd do it themselves.
Yeah. And to clarify, Sam, I never said fraud. Fraud means one thing. I said, I feel like a little bitch when I do courses. And there's a big difference. Fraud means you're misrepresenting yourself. A little bitch means. You're representing yourself as a little bitch and you have to ask yourself, is that accurate or is that not accurate? And yeah, that's how I felt sometimes. I felt like a little bitch for doing courses when I was like, should I be doing something else with my time? This is, I like to teach, but maybe that's like, you know, not the best use of time.
Sorry, I paraphrased that incorrectly. I was trying to, I actually think I made you sound better, but you know, whatever.
I'd be honest. I'd rather be honest. Okay. Pomp, you brought some ideas for us. You know that this is the Idea Podcast. You brought some ideas. Let's rattle them off. So start with number 1. What ideas and trends or opportunities do you see right now in the market?
Yeah, so this first one is one that we're actually doing. So I've thought a lot about it. Housing affordability is the worst it's been in this century. We continue to see people are worried like, hey, I want to buy a house. Should I rent?
Should I buy? What are interest rates going to do?
All these different things, but there's no dominant voice in terms of news commentary and data. And so we started a company called Resi Club. The idea really in the beginning is just go educate people about what is happening. And so I'm not an expert on residential real estate. I don't know that many other experts on residential real estate. So we were able to partner up with a gentleman named Lance Lambert. Lance was the real estate editor at Fortune Magazine. So he's like quote unquote legit, right? He's got 75,000 followers on Twitter. A lot of people in the industry all follow him. And we basically just said to him like, look, man, we want to go build the dominant platform in residential real estate coverage. Why don't we do it together? We know how to scale things. We know how to grow this stuff and monetize, you know, the content, you are the expert. And so let's partner up. And so we've gone ahead, we've got started. It's about 2 months old. And you know, I love these types of businesses because they kind of look stupid almost in the beginning. They're like, oh, you guys just like created a newsletter. Like, yeah, that's exactly what we did. And then it turns into like a media site and then it turns into a data product and then like I don't know, 10 years from now, are we going to have the information where we can go and seed like, you know, general contractors in different markets to actually build affordable housing? Like maybe. And so you start with this small little thing that you can build profitably and you don't have to raise money or, or kind of do anything where there's these, you know, huge expectations. But as you grow the business, you can increase your ambition over time. And so I think a lot of people start with like massive ambition, like let's go to Mars. And sure, there are some companies where that definitely makes sense. But for businesses like this, it's just like, hey, there's a problem in around housing affordability. A lot of people aren't talking about it. We should have more people talking about it, and then we'll figure out how big it can get and how ambitious we can be over time. But we kind of earn the right to go do that.
And so that's what we're doing.
How much did you fund it with?
Way less than people would think. We were profitable within the first month. And so we actually wouldn't have even needed to put money into the bank account, but I think we put $100,000 to get started and never touched it. Because basically, you know, within the first week we were profitable.
And the market for this is, is it brokers, real estate agents that want to pay for this? Or are you looking at investors? Or is it the average person who might be, you know, on Zillow looking for a home?
Yeah. So the beauty of residential real estate is it's the largest asset class in the world, but none of us who are like, oh, we're so smart. We're like business people. We're finance people. We have podcasts. We never think about residential real estate as like the largest asset class in the world. We're like, oh, stocks or crypto or bonds or whatever. And so what you end up getting is it's a very niche thing in that it's residential real estate, but it's a very big thing in that it's the largest asset class in the world. And so what that involves is home builders. It involves real estate agents. It involves people who want to buy or sell homes. It involves people who are doing mortgages, like lenders, et cetera. So there's a huge kind of ecosystem of folks who all need to be aware of what's happening in this industry. And so it's one of these great businesses where it's, it's like small and specific, but also large and broad at the same time.
And I think you're doing it wise. So I'm looking at your paywall and you're saying that, um, like basically you get access to a regional housing tracker data, like some type of dataset. I think that's smart. Who is, was it just Lance? Because it looks like Lance is doing all of the writing. Is he also somehow aggregating all of this data as well?
So Lance is, uh, think of him as like the editor-in-chief, like, like this guy is lights out. Right. And so as soon as he was like interested, I was like, oh, I'm, What do we need to do? How do we like run through brick walls to like get to work with you? So it was very much like, go find partners that you like look up to and want to learn from, et cetera. And he does all of the content today. Eventually there will be an entire team, but I think one of the big lessons that I've learned over the last, you know, 5 or 6 years of kind of like playing on the internet and building these businesses is you just don't need that much. And yes, we have an advantage. I've got a big audience, right? Lance has been doing this for a long time and really understands how to create content and kind of write articles and interview people, et cetera. But at the end of the day, we've now created multiple businesses like this where we start with like 2 or 3 people and you can run for 6 or 12 months and get them profitable with serious cash flow. And then you start to hire a team, salespeople, other editorial folks, et cetera.
Can I give you a critique?
Yeah.
I think this is awesome. I love The Real Deal, which is a real estate blog. Your premium plan is $150 a year. That is so stupid, man. Why aren't you charging way more? It's so hard to do stuff on $150 a year.
Yeah, we, we eventually will, like for, for sure we'll increase the price. But if you think about, um, a lot of times, like even, uh, I'll give you another example. So Beria Times is a, uh, kind of daily news for tech, business, and finance. Um, and started as an email. And when you're building these businesses, you basically have a choice. You can like have a high CPM and be okay with not selling out 100% of the ads sometimes, or you can have a lower CPM and just sell out the ads. I tend to always go for like, let's sell out all of the ad inventory and build the muscle of being able to do it. And you can always raise prices later. Same thing here with the subscription for Resi Club is starting at $150. It's like, if you're interested in this and we're actually creating something valuable, there is zero friction for you paying $150 a year. Over time, we will increase the price, but that's much better and gives us a better signal than let's say we came out with like $1,000 a year and people are like, man, this is valuable, but it's not worth $1,000. At least now we know, okay, we have something that people want. It's helpful to them. They're not churning. And now we got to go and do price discovery over the next 12 months or so. And we'll figure out what that price point is. But I'd rather start with a lower price, make sure we've got the right product, and then raise prices later.
I like this idea a lot. I think it's a really good idea. This is like a $50 to $100 million win bootstrapped. Uh, I think it's gonna be great. Uh, you know, maybe more, but like, I think that's a, a very realistic outcome from this. But I gotta ask you, you know, it's interesting to see ideas when you're at the end of the idea maze, meaning like you figure out like, oh, this is the opportunity we should go with. You're a guy who's got a thousand different opportunities, thousand different ideas of what you could go do. Can you walk me through the idea maze? How did you land at this? And like, what were the kind of like other paths that you considered and, you know, like for example, this is residential, why not commercial? Should it even be real estate or should it be finance? 'Cause actually you have a good foothold in finance and I'm sure, uh, you, we haven't talked about this, but I am sure that there was a little bit of a walk down an idea maze looking for, oh wait, what is the real opportunity here? And then it all starts to, starts to come together. You get the right operator, you figure out the right idea, the right brand, then you go for it.
100%. So, uh, this one's actually a great one to talk about this because we actually, I would call it like a false start. We had partnered with somebody else who, they were not in residential real estate. The way that they cut the market was by geography. And so they were very focused on South Florida. And so it was like, okay, we think that there's a massive business to build that content first that eventually leads to kind of data products that is in the real estate market. And when we got started, we didn't know a lot of people, right? And so I went around, I talked to a couple people, I found someone, I said, hey, they do really good work. Uh, it was a person I really enjoyed kind of working with and, and talking to on a day-to-day basis. And so we got started, but it was very much like small geography, all about South Florida. And then the idea was like, we'll go to like Tampa and then we'll go to like Orlando and then we'll go to Atlanta and then we'll like just go through these geographies. And it didn't work for a whole bunch of different reasons. Uh, probably some of it was our fault. Some of it, uh, was the other person was, you know, very focused on like what they wanted to do in terms of the, the content that they had already been creating and And so we kind of just were like, hey, this isn't that, this like explosive thing. The market isn't like pulling this into existence. And so like rather than bang our heads against the wall for the next 10 years together, like you had a great thing going before we came along and tried to convince you to do this with us. Like, why don't you just keep doing that thing? I don't want to like, you know, hinder your success and your growth. And then we'll like go back to the drawing board. And so that's the second attempt was with this Resi Club. And so you're right that like one, there's an idea maze, but also, uh, I think a lot of people don't realize how often there's false starts to these businesses. Um, Nikita Baire, who is, uh, I think friends of all of ours, he's talked about this a bunch with consumer social apps. He's like, product market fit is not a single metric. Like you just know, right? It's like everything's exploding and you obviously have product market fit, but in both of the apps, TBH and Gas that he launched and eventually sold to Facebook and then to Discord, I think he's publicly described many times he would launch it, it wouldn't hit. They would go back, like make a couple changes, like launch it again. And sometimes he would launch like 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times. And then eventually there was the right combination of all these things that worked. And so there's two ways to do entrepreneurship. One is like, I'm going to bend the world to my will. And like, here's the thing that's going to work regardless of what the market tells me. I'm going to make it happen. And then there's like this iterative approach and a lot of these The things that I work on are much more iterative. And so you just have to be really good at like, go 100% in, run the test as perfectly as possible, but be willing to cut bait and try a different combination of the inputs if for some reason it's not exploding in the way that you want it to.
Sean, you got to tell the Nikita story.
Which one?
Just the, this last one, this last thing that he did.
Yeah, he was telling us as he was building the app and launching it over and over again. Renaming it and like what was happening. One time they renamed it to one thing and then like took off in the gay market. He's like, all he did was change the name of the app and it appealed to like, you know, only gay people. And then he changed the app name and it went back and it, it changed, you know, it changed how the app was going. Um, you know, he, I think he says something that he's like, you know, the most important thing for a consumer startup is like, uh, develop a machine that will allow you to launch tests, like real, like high fidelity tests of your product. Like that is actually your most important product at the beginning, which I kind of agree with, but also kind of disagree with. I think that's a really good way to do the apps he's trying to do, which are like, it doesn't work if it doesn't have a K-factor over 1, right? Like if it's not viral, his apps literally like don't work. And then this app was like, I don't really care about retention, long-term anything. Like it was like, I'm going to get you in. It's going to spam invite your friends. And then there's a paywall. And I need like 2% of people to buy the in-app purchase. And if under 2% of people do it, this doesn't really like make a lot of money. But if I can get 2% or more, this thing will make a few million dollars of profit in the next 90 days.
And, um, you know, so that worked really well for that.
But if you go look at how some of the great, like, consumer products are built, they didn't do any of that shit. Like Pinterest, it's not like Pinterest was sitting around being like, okay, I need to create a system where I can launch systematically in high schools over and over again until I get this correct. Right. And, uh, you know, Facebook and Snapchat, like they did eventually figure out a way to like roll out and grow that, that they did, but they didn't have this like 1,000 shots on goal with different variations trying to get the virality to be just right. Like I'd like, I think what Nikita is doing is awesome because it's such a different game than what anybody else really was playing. However, you know, his advice is basically like how to build a virus, not how to, create the next, like, you know, social network. And I think people think of him as the genius consumer social network guy. And it's like, no, he's basically built like viruses that goes on teen's phones. And, uh, you know, like that, that he's very, very good at.
It's like, what are you optimizing for? Right. You know, if you want to build, uh, the next great social network, like, yeah, K-factor matters in the beginning, but actually what matters more is like, what is the 30, 60, 90-day retention? If you want to just like go viral and be on every single, you know, 14-year-old's phone in America, then the only thing that matters is K-factor, right?
I mean, what do you think of Resy's apps?
Both of his apps within, I don't know, 100 days of getting acquired or 200 days of getting acquired, you know, shut down and wrote off to zero, right? Because they didn't have retention. But the one thing I would give him a ton of credit for, which I think was really impressive, was A, he went back to the well. What most people don't do is they do a space, they become super knowledgeable about it, and they get so jaded. And have so much scar tissue that even though they are the best equipped person in the world to go back and build in that space again, they are so turned off, they go become a beginner at something else, which I think is a fine life choice to make from like a variety of life, but like not optimal from a, from like playing the game of entrepreneurship. The second thing is he was in the world of, I'm going to build a hit, hit social app. And the way that a hit social app works is like get 100 million plus users and then start to make money on ads. And like raise venture capital, do all this. When he went back the second time, he like broke down the fourth wall of Silicon Valley. It was like, what if I don't fund this? And what if I just like charge a little bit of money? And like, what if I just make a few million dollars of profit like every, every month? And like, I don't know how long it'll last, but I think I can make like whatever, you know, like $5 million in the summer. That sounds pretty awesome. Let me try to do that. And nobody Nobody in consumer, like the mobile gaming guys were like, yeah, of course. Like get a bunch of downloads and then charge like, you know, a small amount and see if you can make, you know, your key metric is ARPU. But like the, the mobile gaming guys don't build social apps. The social apps guys don't build mobile games. Those guys don't build enterprise sales. Like people very rarely are able to like rethink the rules of their game. And he rethought the rules of the consumer social game and was like, I'm going to build a consumer social app, but it's going to have the monetization of a mobile game. And I think in basically like a 6-month span, it made like $7 or $8 million in, you know, gross revenue with like, you know, uh, and it, you know, it was very profitable for him in that period of time that he sold the thing. And the, you know, that, that is a very impressive way to like, most people can't do that. Most people can't rewrite the rules of their industry, of their game.
There's two things that you made me think of. The first is there's a whole group of these people who are like trying to rewrite the rules or think about this differently. One of my favorite examples, and I don't want to share who it is because I don't know if they're okay with it, but, um, they created like an ability to make photos in your Instagram story blurry. And basically you would have to pay on Apple Pay to like unblur the photo. So obviously like all the OnlyFans girls would put it on their Instagram story and it'd be like just blurry enough where people are like, oh, that looks like something I might really like looking at. And then they'd pay like $2, $5, $10, like whatever it was set at. And so you're like bootstrapping off of these massive audiences these people already have, but it's like a little feature and they don't raise money for it. It's just like basically how much money can we generate as quickly as possible? And I mean, they make a lot of money, right? And so it works. So it is possible. Speaking of folks who go back to the well, do you guys know who Brad Jacobs is?
Yeah, he created like $6 billion companies now or something like that.
I'm trying to, I've been trying to get him on the pod. I've been trying. I can't.
He's got a book coming out. He'll definitely come on. He's got a book coming out. So he's one 100% going on.
I can't get in touch with him.
We'll talk later, but he's 100% going on everyone's podcast because he's got a book coming out, which is like the best time to get these guys. But, uh, so about 4 or 5 years ago, somebody like almost like, uh, like a back alley drug deal was like, check out Brad Jacobs. And I was like, never heard of him. Like, who's that? Got on Wikipedia and literally for a week and a half, like didn't sleep, was just like all over scouring the internet, trying to figure out like what obscure podcast did this guy do? Because he just did it over and over and over again. And what he essentially does is he just does roll-ups. Like Wayne Huizenga is another guy who's like famous for doing this. And what Brad did is just figure out a business model, figure out a funding mechanism, start winning, and then go around and tell everyone like, hey, I'm going to do the same playbook and I'm going to win again. And then people gave him money.
So explain what he did.
So one of the things that they did was in the waste industry, which also I think Wayne Huizenga had a big one as well. In the waste industry, basically they would go and, and where he started was he didn't go to major markets. He didn't even go to like what he calls like secondary markets. He basically went to like podunk towns and was like, I'm gonna buy the landfill. And then once he bought the landfill, he was like, okay, there's like 7 companies that all pick up trash in the surrounding area and they bring to this landfill. And he would just like, would start like snipering off each one of 'em. He'd buy the first one, then he'd buy the second one, the third one, and eventually he'd own all 7 of the companies plus the landfill. And so he just did this across the country and he would roll it all up. That one was like, I think early '90s, it was called United Waste Systems. And so he took that company public and it ended up being like a multi-billion dollar outcome. He's done that same thing like 6 or 7 times now. And so you're just like, okay, building a billion dollar company's cool. Building 2, you're like, damn, like you, you've got the, the golden touch. If you do more than 5, there's like one of you.
I think he's done it with, so he did the waste management thing, then he did United Rentals, which was like renting heavy like dump trucks and porta-potties and Bobcats and things like that. Then he did it with XO Logistics, I think, which is currently publicly— XPO, which is currently a publicly traded company. And I think he did it 2 or 3 other times. I mean, he's done it many, many times. I think his book is called How to Make a Billion Dollars. Or something like that. Like it's a pretty baller title.
He's like, uh, Mark's coming on My First Million. Um, quite literally beneath me.
You want to know something funny about, uh, about how he describes himself? He's like, you know, I'm a career CEO, serial entrepreneur. Like he is very much like what you would expect from a guy who's built multiple billion dollar companies. But if you Google his name, uh, you know, on LinkedIn, how there is like, um, a, uh, like a preview of the website. On LinkedIn, it says Brad Jacobs is an influencer because I think he has like the influencer, like categorization on LinkedIn and they just like autofill it. But it's like the classic, imagine telling Brad Jacobs like, ah, you're not really like a multi-billion dollar entrepreneur. You're just an influencer. He'd like blow a gasket.
Yeah, that's so true. That's what it says. First top link on Google. Brad Jacobs is an influencer, period. Got him.
Like, stop disrespecting that man.
The reason he's cool is like, okay, so he lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. He wears like a suit and tie most of the time. He looks like a suit and I'm sure he's very professional and a wonderful CEO. But if you actually like listen to some of the things he says, he's way more of a, he's way more entrepreneurial than like his picture looks, you know what I mean? Like he's got that artist vibe a little bit. The guy's special. He's very fascinating. But before his book came out and, or is coming out, He's been really under the radar for how successful he is. He's a really fascinating person.
Yeah. The, the, um, one of my favorite activities is like, if you're ever reading an article, like, uh, Bloomberg, uh, does this a lot. And, um, uh, actually the Financial Times, they'll like randomly talk about these like really wealthy people and I'll just immediately, you know, copy paste Google, like, hey, who is this person? And, uh, recently I did it and, um, let me see if I can find this guy's name real quick. Because it was like one of these things where as soon as you go down the rabbit hole, you're like, wow, this is like a whole different game. What is this dude's name? Oh, here you go. Benny Steinmetz. So they call him an Israeli tycoon, but he like got in a bunch of trouble and there was like fraud and I think he maybe even got arrested, et cetera. But like he's in the commodities game and you're like, I've never heard of Benny Steinmetz. He sounds like he's built some massive companies, but also in the commodities game, like sometimes there's gold in the mine and other times there's a promise of gold in the mine, you know, type thing. And so you're just like, how many of these people are out there that are not on the internet or not well known in the like internet circle? And sure, you can go look at the Forbes 400. You can go look at like all these lists that people put together. There's way more people that are completely unknown than I think known. And so it does kind of remind you like you don't, you only got to be right once or twice and you can achieve immense amount of wealth or success by doing just like the basic things. Go buy assets that end up being valuable.
If you Google this guy, he looks like one of these guys that can like find a pressure point on your neck that makes you like collapse. He looks, he looks, he looks very legitimately like a killer and I researched him as well. He was in the IDF. So like he's a trained military guy. And if you Google him, he looks scary. He looks like he'll put you to sleep. What other ideas are interesting to you at the moment?
So I'll give you a couple of categories. There's one that I, the best name I had for it is like persistent patrol companies. So if you think about one of the big problems that city states and the national government's going to have is like they have to get more money. They're broke, right? And if you're broke, you either like cut your costs as much as possible or you go make more money. They're not going to cut costs. They got to make more money. One of the best examples is in New York City, the congestion tax.
That's one of the few taxes that I'm on board with.
You're on board. Okay. All right. Let me explain what it is first and then we can debate. The way it works is like, I don't know, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, if you drive from like outside of Lower Manhattan into Lower Manhattan, they charge you like $20. Like it's a pretty large tax. Every single day. So it only is charged one time, but you can imagine all the cars that are driving from above 59th Street, below 59th Street, between 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, and they're getting hit with this $20 tax. It's a way for the city to raise more money, get more income. It's called a congestion tax. It's the first one in the United States, but this has been happening in Europe and other places for quite a while. So it's not a new concept. It's just new to America.
They're also considering charging people like $1,000 a month or something really high in order to own a car in the city.
There's all kinds of ideas because it all comes back to this thing. Like they need more money, right? They're broke. And over the last couple of years in cities like New York, people who were paying a lot in taxes, they left. Like there's the infamous story of David Tepper. He was in New Jersey and he was responsible for 3% of the state's budget in the taxes he personally paid. And he moved to Florida and there's all these articles that were like, the state of New Jersey is going to go broke because David Tepper is moving. And so I think it was for like some sort of a family medical situation. He moved for a couple of years. When he moved back, the way the story goes is that he called up the state treasurer and was like, yo, you got $120 million coming to you next year. Like put it into your budget.
I'll back this.
Right. So like wealthy people. Yeah. It's, and it's New Jersey. It's not like, it's like North Dakota, right? It's like the state of New Jersey was dependent on this guy for material percentage of their state budget. So wealthy people have been moving. So my idea is like, uh, well, how are they going to get more revenue? Right now, a lot of revenue is derived from like parking tickets or like stupid things where they have humans walking around trying to like catch people doing things they're not supposed to be doing. So I think there's going to be an entire rise of businesses that just use computer vision to do the same thing. Like anything that can be automated will be automated rather than have humans with their lazy eyes walking around, just have computers that constantly monitor. For it. So parking tickets is an easy one. Fire marshals, like how many times have you gone to an event and it's like, you know, fire marshal says 220 people can be here. You're like, I think there's 1,000 people in this room right now.
Right?
So like they can just automate, okay, you hit with a $500 fine every single time at this event venue, et cetera. Elevators, like you can just go through this and see over and over again that computer vision will just become like the persistent eye. It's scary. Like, I don't like the idea of this, but I do think someone's going to build this technology and it's not going to be the government. And so we're likely to see a huge rise of these businesses that use what is pretty like standard technology at this point to just like count the number of humans walking into a building and stay on top of it so that the government can generate more revenue.
Well, there's also like an LA, don't they have the mansion tax? Right? Like, it's like, oh, if you sell a home for more than $5 million, there's just like, here's a new tax. And they're like, what do these people—
New York has it too—
live in small homes? Like, they'll never do it. They'll never downsize. Like, we got them. We can charge literally anything we want and they're still going to pay it. You know, I kind of agree with you that getting this revenue stream is going to be important. Obviously, I hate the idea of the persistent patrol computers basically fining you for taking every misstep. But I think the root thing you're talking about, like, how do you help governments make more money is going to be a business opportunity because you're right. They, uh, they do need it.
There's a competition right now between, uh, taxes and tipping. Like when you go to the coffee shop, there's literally going to be a competition between is on the bill, if it's itemized, does the government get more money out of the bill or does the tipping? Because we've become this like tipping society where somebody like pours a coffee and they're like, that'll be 15% on top of the bill. And so if the government continues to increase sales tax, like very much, these bills are going to get inflated because it's just everyone's got more hands in the cookie jar.
So Sean, New York has a mansion tax. Do you want to know what the threshold is in order to pay it?
No.
What is it? All right. So keep in mind, I think the average sale of a New York home is like $800,000. The mansion tax starts at a million dollars.
So basically you're like, you have a second bedroom.
Mansion. Yeah. So their mansion tax, I think it's close to 4%. It ranges, I think, but I think it goes up to 4%. So basically if you purchase a 2-bedroom apartment in New York City, you basically have to say, all right, here's an additional $40,000 just for buying, or is it for selling? I don't remember which one, but someone pays roughly $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 for a 2-bedroom apartment that, and So they have it as well in New York City. It's pretty wild.
I mean, that's like a $5,000 mortgage payment, right? Like if you're like, hey, I don't want to pay $7,000, $8,000 for a 2-bedroom, I'm going to instead buy and I'm going to have to pay $4,500 or $5,000 with 8% interest rates on my mortgage. Like a million bucks. Like, yeah, that you're getting hit with the mansion tax.
It's pretty wild. But yeah, New York has that. New York gets you in so many different ways. It's a very challenging place to live because of that.
You live in New York, right?
I do live in New York.
Like, what will it take for you to move?
Basically nothing. Like at this point, I'm not going to move. I moved and I think that I've come to the realization that I'm willing to pay for the experience. Like, yes, the taxes are higher, but I feel like the money that I give on those higher taxes is very much in exchange for the density of New York City, the experience, like all of that. And so to some degree, it's like the biggest expense I pay every year, but it's because of the quality of life or a specific type of quality of life that I want. And so I've just come to terms with it and like, you know, stroke the check every year.
And compared to other cities, New York does a half decent job of like making it feel like you're getting what you paid for. You know, you've got good parks, subway system, whatever. But damn, it's still challenging, particularly, I mean, you were in Florida for a while. I'm in Texas at the moment. When I'm thinking about going to New York, I'm like, Golly, this changes the math a lot. The math changes at a significant amount.
Yeah, just close your eyes and don't look.
Yeah. All right.
I got one, I got one more idea before we go, which is AI agents.
I don't know.
I sent you guys the link, but this kid, I don't know this guy, Jacob Greenfield.
We love this. We love him. I don't know him either, but he posts amazing stuff.
He immediately is awesome in my book because he posted this yesterday and I was thinking like what we could talk about today. And he basically used these AI agents, which like, that's all I know about them is they're called AI agents. But they like go and do these jobs. And so he was like, all right, I'm going to go have an AI agent that finds opportunities and I'm going to score the opportunities based on like how much money could I make and how difficult would it be to execute? And he basically populated this whole list. And then he's like, but haha, I'm going to create a second AI agent that then goes and looks at all of the opportunities that are high earning potential, low difficulty. And I'm going to have them create a plan on how I could actually execute to do that thing. And then he's probably going to create like a third AI agent and be like, and then I'm going to have them carry out the plans from AI agent number 2. But it's just like, again, yes, you have to be technical to be able to figure some of this stuff out or work with technical people. But the world is changing at a very rapid pace. And what we're seeing is everyone was worried about like the blue collar worker was going to get automated away. Like, damn, it sounds like Jacob is automating away My First Million. Like, all of a sudden no one has to listen to the podcast. They're just going to get an Excel sheet with like, how do I get rich without doing a lot of work and go do those opportunities, right? So it's cool to see, but I do think that there's a lot of things that people are going to figure out here of just like how to find better opportunities without having to spend, you know, thousands of hours doing the research.
This is awesome. This tweet is awesome. I'm looking at it now. This is very good.
They are awesome, but also like, like, okay, I like, like, I think the, it's like one of these things where like the demo shows you what's possible, but the demo is not like usable. Uh, and I feel like, you know, the same way kind of about VR right now. Like, uh, every time I buy the new VR, I buy the new VR every time it comes out and then I put it on and I'm like, holy shit, this is amazing. I can't wait to show 5 other people this. And then I'm going to put it on the shelf and not touch it for a year. Like, but it soon this will be like, this will be, it'll, it'll solve all the pain points. Like, um, you know, you used to have to be tethered to a computer. Now you don't. It used to be where It was really hot and sweaty in there. Now it's not. You used to not be able to see the room when you're there. Now you can see through, you can see the room. Like they're improving it one step at a time. Like for example, the things on this list are, you know, like clean energy solutions for shipping, innovating fuel alternatives. Like, okay. Yeah, sure. Moneymaker battery that lasts forever. You know, cool. I got you.
Pop, why isn't real estate blog on here?
Not enough money and way too difficult.
Where's real estate blog? It didn't make the top 30.
So I think the idea of this is really cool, but, uh, you know, in practice, like if you, if somebody sat down and was like, great, I'm gonna do that thing. I'm gonna go use that, that thing to make it happen. I, I don't think any of it's like usable at this point. I will give you one example that I think is usable. So, um, I think somebody could do this right now. I think, uh, you know, somebody who wants to play a different game could go play this game. Upwork has like, I don't know, $3 or $4 billion of GMV every year of people basically paying for tasks that get done on Upwork. And I'm pretty sure a huge number of Upwork tasks and Fiverr tasks are automatable right now. Or like maybe they're not 100% automated, but like you could take that same person, use, you know, use AI, use technology in order to be like, 10x your output, 5x your output. So you get just like better leverage, operational leverage. I think if somebody combined private equity and AI, you could go roll up and buy the top profiles on Upwork and Fiverr. So you basically buy the search juice that these guys have so that they're going to get the top, like, you know, logo design. You're going to go get the top jobs because you're the number one rank because you were there since 2013 on Fiverr or whatever. And I think you could go buy all of those and then you could put them all under one roof and be like, That's wild. We're going to use AI to fulfill a huge number of these. And you could make a lot of money because those little properties on top of Fiverr, on top of Upwork, those are valuable rental properties. Essentially, they go get income every month, but now you have a way to get more margin out of that rental income. So I think already you could buy them at a good price because nobody else is really buying those. But on top of that, you could probably get some more operational leverage out of it.
This was the whole idea that like Thrasyo and other Amazon aggregators had was they were going to like go buy up a bunch of Amazon stores. And I know somebody who financed a lot of them. And his thesis was like, if you're the first search result for a very popular product, that is like real estate. And so it's like location, location, location. Like you are the first search result. And so you'll constantly get traffic. Obviously there's platform risk if there's some sort of algorithm change or whatever, but they were able to kind of model out that risk. The hard part is like you're dealing in physical goods on Amazon. And what you're talking about is like, you're basically just dealing with software. And so there is 100% somebody some obscure place in the world who is like the best Fiverr logo designer right now. And they are just like a Midjourney, like power user. Right. And so it's like, okay, uh, I used to be able to design X number of logos per month. Now I can do 100x that. And oh, you want to give me feedback? No problem. I'll just change the prompt to make it exactly what you want. And I can do it in, you know, 1/100th of the time. Yeah, like that sounds awesome to that person. And frankly, like that's how the world should work. Like you should pay the same for the result because you're buying the result, not the amount of work. And like that person after having figured out how to do it is going to be financially rewarded. Like we want that financial or economic system to be exactly how business works.
Do you, uh, uh, of all these companies that you're working on, how much time are you allocating to each one? How many businesses do you have now?
I don't know how many, but let's just call it like around 10. I think of it kind of like a 2x2 matrix to some degree. There are some businesses that are young and need lots of time. And then there are a lot of companies that are older and don't need as much time. The only thing that changes between those two things is like fires, right? So it's like, if you look at my day, it is mostly distributed to the companies that are just getting off the ground. We're trying to figure out how to build momentum. We're trying to get to profitability. We're trying to like figure out the first couple of hires. We're trying to like make sure we've got the product correct. Like all those types of things. And then, uh, maybe 20%, 15% of my day is like, oh, we just lost a big customer. Or there's some like fire to put out with one of the companies that's already pretty mature. But after the first, I don't know, 6 months, like the company works or it doesn't. And if it works, then actually I'm probably doing the company a disservice if I'm like still meddling in. The day-to-day decision-making and leadership of the business. We have somebody who runs the company, like they should be the ones to sink or swim. And I think they appreciate the autonomy to just go do it themselves without having me micromanage them over their shoulder. The only thing that I do do is every week I get a weekly update and frankly, like I read 'em, I give a little bit of feedback here and there, but it's more so for the people who run the company because it forces them just to write down, what do we get done this week? And no one, including myself, ever wants to send an update. It's like we got nothing done. So that's really the only thing that's like persistent week in, week out, regardless of the age of the business.
How are you balancing the two things of A, like buy versus build? So I think Sean and Andrew Wilkinson, they're toying around with the idea of buying parts of companies or wholly owning companies that they buy, as well as focus of, well, these one or two things could have outsized returns. I should only do those.
Yeah. So buying versus build is like really interesting. I've gone back and forth over the years. Like we've bought a couple of businesses, not a lot, but a few. And then we've obviously built a number of them. And you know, there's a sector right now that I'm looking at, it's in the media space. It's a very specific type of audience. I think that it's kind of a unique thing. I'm not usually big on like ideas are valuable. This to me is just like we understand something about an audience that most other people haven't yet discovered. And so we think that that it could be interesting to go after. There's two players in the market that are well known in that industry. Again, it's a niche, but also like very big. And both players, you'd probably have to pay like over $100 million to buy them in kind of total cost. And you probably can't buy a minority stake. And so it's like, at this point, given our track record, I probably could go try to figure out, you know, a bunch of these like big institutional investors who want to buy media businesses and like go put it together. It's a lot of work. You have to convince someone to sell it to you. You have to get the terms right, integration, like, like there's a lot of challenges. But then I'm like, dude, I think for $100 grand we could create a competitor and like, it's not going to be worth $100 million, you know, within the first 2 or 3 years. But like, could we like take a big dent into their businesses? Probably. So when it's that skewed, I obviously tend to lean towards building versus buying. I think where it's harder is like, Hey, the business is worth like $10 million or $5 million. And you're like, that's like 2 years of progress versus not spending the money upfront and like maybe you get there. That's where I probably lean much more towards like buying versus building. It's just like, it's a lower risk and the deal's easier to get done than trying to go and buy these huge things that frankly, there's only so many people in the world that are actually good at doing.
And what about the focus thing?
I mean, I only do one thing. I remember your face, it's seared in my brain last time you asked me this and I was like, no, I don't do a lot of things. I do one thing. We provide capital and distribution to businesses.
I think that's inspiring. I think that Shawn and I fall on different sides. I actually think, Shawn, I'm slowly buying into other viewpoints.
Oh shit. I'm trying to go over to where you're at. I'm trying to focus more.
Sam has, no, no, hold on a second. This is a lie. Sam, you have multiple businesses. Businesses. Like you're not just doing one thing, although you think of like, I don't know, Airbnb short-term rental, right? Like you built that out. Like that's a project that you were working on, right? At the same time you were getting Hampton off the ground, right? Like, like there's all these things where sometimes it's not like, okay, I'm going to raise money and go build this big business. It could just be like projects, but you're, you're constantly doing multiple things.
I call them hobbies. So I, I have a 40-hour-a-week thing, which is is actually, so I'm disproving my, my own point. It's actually podcasting and Hampton. Um, so that doesn't exactly make my point, but that's like my 9 to 5. And then like, I've, I've got like weekend projects is how I consider it.
So meet Sam Parr. He's a podcaster with weekend hobbies.
Podcast influencer, content man.
Producer, content producer. I think, I think, I think we've done a really good job of rebranding that. Creator just sounds weak for some reason.
There's a bunch of people changing their, uh, X bios right now. They're like just deleting creator and putting producer.
Yeah. It's just, for some reason it's a weak, that's a weak, that's a weak, uh, uh, word. I don't know what it is, but we do need to rebrand that.
Well, it just, it bulks you in with everybody else. That's the problem. Like, uh, it's like, oh no, I'm, I'm, I'm not like them. No, no, no. That guy's just unemployed. There's a difference, you know, I'm a different thing. I need to have a new name.
I met a guy who, he was one of the early hires at Palantir and he essentially like, I don't know, he didn't tell me this, but like, I think he was like basically the COO, right? Or whatever in the early days. And he was like, yeah, one of the cool things about the culture is like, you kind of like jointly with your boss made up your title. And so his was like risk identifier and destroyer, right? And it's just like, man, names do matter. Like, what does that guy do? I want to go work at I've been in a company where like, that could be my title and it's very clear inside the organization. What the president does at different companies may be different, but the guy whose title is like risk identifier and destroyer is 100% focused on risk. And so same thing, like content creator, like maybe it's the wrong name and just change the name and then all of a sudden everyone's really excited about it.
Chamath has a good story about this. He says when he was at Facebook, they were trying to hire like, you know, some PhD level math and stats guy and they were like, cool, like you can come be a data analyst. He's like, I don't wanna be a data analyst. I'm gonna go get my PhD instead. He's like, I don't know. Did I say data analyst? Data scientist. We have a new field called data science and you're one of the first to be a data scientist on earth. And he's like, yeah, I invented the tag data science. And then now it's like, you know, a whole like prestigious job title in Silicon Valley is to, is data science.
Is that story true? That's, that's a, that's a hard story to believe. Is you think that's true?
Yeah, I believe it. I don't know. I have no reason not to believe it.
I did. I love those guys so much on the All In podcast, but I was laughing that people were giving them shit about using Scaramucci as a measuring stick. You guys see this? Yeah.
No, what's that?
Like Scaramucci was the White House communications director for 11 days, I think, right? I mean, like the infamous photo, he's got the sunglasses on with the finger guns, like probably one of the greatest stints in the White House of all time. And so people always tweet at Scaramucci, like when, you know, like Emmett Shear was the CEO of OpenAI for like 48 hours. They're like, hey, how many Scaramuccis did he last? Scaramucci will like calculate it, like, you know, 0.2 or whatever. And so the All In guys, they had been saying it for a while and they were like, yeah, we invented that.
And the internet loves to hate on those guys if you're not in like the tech industry. So they were just like waiting for them to say something. And of course, They all started pulling up like articles and whatever. And I'm like, man, this is like peak internet, right? Is like somebody wants credit for a term that no one's really clear where it came from. And then a bunch of people who don't like that person wants to critique them and yell and scream and like go do a bunch of work to disprove them. I was like, we are all wasting our time. We should just get off the internet and like go do productive things.
But it's kind of like when I, when I say MFM, we get credit for making Andrew Huberman and Bryan Johnson. Famous, uh, the longevity guy, according to us. Yeah, you're welcome, world.
I actually think that Kim Kardashian's famous because of you guys. Didn't one of you tweet about her early on?
Yeah, it's like, you ever heard of Rob Dyrdek? You're welcome.
First one to watch her work, I think. Uh, yeah, it was great.
Um, Pom, thanks for doing this, man. We love hanging out with you.
Absolutely. I appreciate you guys very much. Uh, can I plug one thing before I leave?
Yeah, yeah.
We have a job board. It's called dreamstartupjob.com. Used to be called Pop Crypto Jobs. It was just crypto. We've now expanded it to be crypto and everything else. We've helped 3 people a day on average for now over 2 years get a new job. And so there's 10,000 open roles on there. If you want to get a job at your dream startup, you should go to dreamstartupjob.com and check it out.
All right.
Appreciate it. It looks good. I remember what it used to be. I think this is a smart move.
Well, we'll figure it out. I appreciate you, fellas.
Good to see you, man.
That's the pod.
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.