$2.4M In ONE Day?!

So let's do a little public math here. Let's break a rule. He just launched this product. He had more demand than he was willing to let in. He let in 5,000 people. That's $20 million in ARR that he had on day one of launching this product. 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. All right, what's up? It's me and Sam, two guys who you can't live without. You know, I should really think about what I'm going to say before I start this podcast. I literally just start talking and whatever comes out of my mouth is fine. And then also it's 9 AM for me. I, you know, I wake up, I don't talk to anyone from 8 AM to 9 AM. So these are the first words I say, period. And that's what came out. All right. Well, here we are. We both have one topic in both of our lists, which is very, very rare that we have overlap here. We both have this topic because there's a business that sold for $500 million that is a badass story and it's called Follow Up Boss. I had never heard of this company before. I find out they sell for $500 million in cash. Tell me about Follow Up Boss. You, I think you know more.

You know how I know about them? I know about them for two reasons. The biggest reason, they're a Hampton member. And so I saw them post that they had just sold. Man, this story's crazy. So I had never heard of this company.

Have you? Never heard of them until today.

So there's not really a reason why we would've heard of them other than for, we're just business nerds, but it's a real estate platform. So it's a vertical software. And so basically the gist of it is is that if you are a real estate agent or if you own a company that has multiple real estate agents, you get leads from Redfin, Zillow, whatever else. Ideally you get thousands of leads per month as well as you have homes that you're selling and people who are buying homes. You have to track 'em all. It's basically kind of what HubSpot or Salesforce does, but specifically for real estate agents. The guy Dan, he started it 12 years ago, I think. Do you know how he started it? That's what's fascinating about it.

I don't know how he started it, but, but you're right. So the, the gist of it is it's a niched down CRM. So agents get leads, they need to follow up with those leads. You gotta keep track of all those leads. So it's a sort of HubSpot for real estate agents, just zoomed in, zoomed way in on that one niche. Has a pretty insane exit. So how did they start it?

The Foundation? No, I've never heard of that.

So people have to tell you the revenue when you join Hampton? Don't you just have this? Can't you just take a peek at the quick HIPAA record here? But I would never cite that.

So I'm, so I just Googled like, uh, you know, Follow Up Boss revenue and I'm just like, what, what could I see that's public? All right. Fair enough. So, so I don't know.

Yeah, this, this is a, um, an awesome story and a good example of kind of the niche down, uh, the niche down, zoom in pivot. And I think that this is a, you know, there's many like, um, business plan blueprints. So for example, those guys from 37signals, what they're doing is they just go, Hey, what's a super popular thing, but has too many features? We're going to make it do less and take up less of your life. And that's like an, as an example, you know, hey, their email client, they're like, yeah, just, it's just going to do these things in this way, less features, the better, less clutter, the better. And they're doing it again with Once where they're doing software that you only have to pay for one time, no monthly recurring, right? So that their thing is it's the stripped down version of X. I don't know if you saw. Well, I don't know if you saw, but the guys who started Tuft Needle came out with a new company. Did you see this?

Crazy. What's it called? Boring Mattress?

Boring Mattress. So the guys who created Tuft Needle, they were part of the D2C, you know, mattresses were like the poster boy of the D2C wave that happened where Casper and Tuft Needle and Purple got big, raised a bunch of money, burned a bunch of money, kind of didn't have a great exit. So these guys came back and now it's just boring.co is the name of their website. It's like, this is a plain mattress. Our friends told us that we should tell you about all the cool benefits, features that will make this quote different and quote sellable. But we're not convinced. We don't think you'll fall for that. So here's just a really good mattress that'll last you a while. No frills.

And it's only $400, right? Or it's like, it's cheap.

Yeah. $500. And so that's their new thing. And so there's, that's one blueprint in a business is to do The same thing with less, less frills actually, like, you know, brand, less of a brand, uh, pump or, or less features that you needed to, to, to use. Trello's a good example of this. Uh, all productivity apps had more and more and more features. Trello was like, hey, we're just gonna have less features, right? It's just the equivalent of index cards on the internet that you can move around.

There's actually another takeaway here though, which is how long, so you started an e-commerce company, how long until you hit your first $100,000 in revenue per month?

Like 3 months, probably. Okay.

Uh, you're involved in Shepherd. Uh, how long do you think it took them to hit their first $100,000 in, in revenue?

I have no idea. I'm going to guess 6 months. Yeah.

Quick. Okay. 6 months. So we're talking months. Uh, Hampton took a short amount of time, months as well. Uh, The Hustle, I think it took 9 months. Do you know how long it took Follow Up Boss to get to $100 million in revenue or, uh, sorry, $100,000 in monthly Uh, well, you said they had one customer for $150, like hanging by a thread for a while.

So is it more than a year to get to that first milestone? 4 years.

I got 0% of this. You are more of a stick to it kind of guy. Do you think, I mean, if you're under $100,000 in revenue, 4 years in, are you doing this still?

It's hard. So like, all right, so I have an audience now.

So do you think, do you think you could have stuck with it?

It depends where I was in life. If I was, if it was 26-year-old Sam, 50% chance. If it's where I am now, I would say 5% chance. It would be really hard. It would be, it would be hard.

I'd be going into those meetings and be like, all right guys, we're going to review the metrics today. Uh, earmuffs, everybody. We're going to say the revenue number and then everybody has to do this. And then I say we're at $42,000 in year 4. And then I'll be like, all right, but, but there's other things to be excited about.

But we talked to Dharmesh about this and Dharmesh is pretty, uh, he's pretty low-key about it. He's like, it took forever. In reality, Dharmesh, uh, HubSpot, Dharmesh is the founder of HubSpot. HubSpot, I think grew like actually a lot faster, but he was like, man, the first like 6 years we only got to like $4 million or something in revenue. I forget exactly what he said, but he like conveyed the idea where he's like, it's a slog at first.

But the thing about that time, Things just grew slower. Now things grow much faster, right? The benchmarks and the expectations are way different.

But you have to have faith. And of course, we're talking about the one that worked. Uh, and there's a lot, there's so many more that don't work, but like to have that faith of like, this can work and to stick to it for 10, 11, 12 years. If, if you have the right, you know, metrics, this shit pays off. This, these software companies are so much cooler than what we typically start.

So I did a, I remember many years ago, I did a fireside chat with Michael Birch, who was at the time was, you know, my mentor. He was my boss. Uh, he's a guy who's built 4 or 5 super successful internet companies that scaled to millions of users. He's basically a billionaire at this point in Silicon Valley. And a bunch of entrepreneurs came over and they were asking questions. One of the questions they asked was, how do you know when to pivot or persevere? Meaning you hear the stories about Follow Up Boss or Pinterest where it's like, there was, it was not taking off for a while and then, you know, they stuck with it and then it did.

Did Pinterest take a long time?

Okay.

And it goes back, you could also like go back to like what inefficiencies or like where does the owner or CEO, where do they like suck? So like, for example, I remember at The Hustle, I was always fearful of overspending. And so I was cheap about shit and I was actually overly cheap. And when there was times when Facebook ads opened up and it's like, dude, we got to spend more here. Looking back, I should have spent way more, but I didn't because I was being too cheap. And like, why am I cheap? Well, because of all this other shit that I experienced in life. And so like, it's basically like, what did they say? Like, uh, a person with money is, they, it's just going to like magnify the things that the traits that they already have, or like, you always say that with people when they're drunk, like, oh, you're, you're the true feelings are just going to come out. Right. It's the same thing as with running a company and you got to like master that inner game and it's really hard.

Yeah, for sure. Let's do another one. Um, I want to talk about, um, let's do You have this one, Peter Levels is insane. Tell me the Peter Levels is insane one. That's a good headline.

I love this guy. So Peter Levels, we had in the pod, I think we've only had him once, but he's got an open invitation if he wants to come on again. So Peter Levels, we both love him. He, uh, has like 4 or 5 different businesses that he runs. I think he's by himself doing it. Collectively, his businesses probably do $2 million a year in sales, and he's super transparent about all of it. So he puts his revenue in his bio on his, uh, Twitter. He shares everything. Really fascinating, thoughtful guy. Did you see what he did with his stock portfolio? So he basically, so click that tweet and you'll see it, but he basically created a Google Sheet and he, you can kind of, I don't, he doesn't explicitly say it, but you could do the math. He says, uh, here's how much my stock portfolio made me. Um, and it was up 32%. So you can kind of like just do basic algebra and figure out how much he has in his portfolio. And he reveals every holding that he has. And I think that A, I'm happy he is doing this. B, I would never ever do this though. Like it's, this is like his transparency is wild, but it's super fascinating to see what this guy is doing when it comes to like sharing his numbers out in public. It's pretty, pretty fascinating.

I got to say two things about Peter. So first, Peter, come back on the pod. We miss you. You've done a bunch of interesting stuff. This plus your new AI stuff that we didn't talk about yet. So I want to do that. Second, we've had a bunch of people on this podcast, some that have big names, some that have, you know, big, uh, big track records of billionaires or built this $100 billion company or whatever. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has a higher approval rating amongst entrepreneurs on the internet than Peter Levels. Have you ever met anybody that is not a fan of Peter Levels?

I've had billionaire friends, like, or associates in a conversation and they'll go, that guy's doing it right. Everyone likes this guy.

Put this guy's profile picture up on the, on the fucking screen. Go to YouTube and just look at this guy's profile picture. This is your personal branding seminar. Look at this guy's profile picture. It's him on a couch in the, like, international pose of, like, Guy scheming on the internet, just messing around, having fun on the internet by himself. He's on a couch, half his body's dangling off. He's got his laptop. He's not wearing no shirt. He's got his laptop up on a pillow because, you know, the laptop starts to just scorch you after a while. And he's at this messed up angle. His neck's all messed up. But you know, this guy is a one-man band just having fun. And I, this is why you're right. CEOs of like, you know, major companies are like that guy. That guy's doing it right. Because everybody is jealous of being able to be this guy. A guy who's just one man and a laptop, travels around the world, builds projects, whatever he wants for fun. He builds cool stuff like an artist that, um, whatever he builds tends to have some, some juice behind it because he's a very creative guy. Um, he's had many failures, but who cares? And he's got a bunch of successes. He's very open about them. He's not trying to sell you anything. Peter Levels is a hero amongst makers and nobody, I will contend this, nobody has a higher approval rating on the internet. Amongst entrepreneurs than Peter Levels.

He's great, man. He's great. And I think on this podcast, a lot of people are like, oh, you're talking about just big companies too often or whatever. And it's like, we always reiterate this. It's like, we like people who carve their path and that path could lead to a huge exit. It could lead to something really small. Like, uh, just, you could just be a great artist. It doesn't matter if it's a big money thing or not. And Peter Levels, the reason why he's so fascinating is He has carved the hardest path and he sticks to it. He's very value-based. Really, really, really cool guy.

You know that meme where it's like, uh, babe, wake up, Sean Perry just tweeted again, or like, babe, wake up, you know, like Peter Levels bought a domain. Yeah. Whenever Peter replies to one of my tweets, it's like one of those, it's like, babe, wake up. Peter just said he liked what I'm doing. That's how I feel about this guy. Really cool guy.

And I have a theory that people ultimately, what is lacking in most people's lives is That they don't live life on their own terms. And then the way that that expresses itself is, uh, you have a lot of fun when you're living life on your own terms, when you're just doing your, not your thing, you're doing your thang. And if you're doing your thang, you're having a good time. Peter levels, that profile picture of him on his couch, like all crooked, just on his laptop. He's doing his thang. And I feel like this is honestly, it's a bit of why people like this podcast. We're not the most prepared or researched or well-spoken or whatever, but people could tell we have fun in our lives that we like, we literally just do the shit that we want to do and we're having a good time. And it might be that the things we do are not at all the things you want to do, right? Sam's like buying a ranch and like, you know, tipping cows and I don't know what all this shit you do. I don't want to do all that stuff, but I could tell that you want to do all that stuff and that's awesome. It's great that you want to do all those things. You know, you build your like gym and your farmhouse and whatever, all that good stuff. I think that Peter Levels is a great example of somebody who's just living life on his own terms. And that is one of the most attractive traits that people have in general. And it's so funny because what most people do is the exact opposite. Peter Levels has a bunch of influence, but when most people try to become influencers, they, uh, you know, strip down their personality and try to, um, appeal to others and people could sniff that out.

Yeah, I just think he's the best and I DM him on a regular basis. He replies to me 10% of the time. So Peter, if this makes it to you, come on the pod, man. Come on, come back on. What do you got?

All right. Let's do, so another person who is gone from zero to hero, Brian Johnson.

Have you seen the t-shirt that he wears lately?

Don't die.

Yeah. Don't die.

Don't die. That's a new, that's a new brand. You know what I like about it? It's the same look as the Austin 316 t-shirts. Yes. And I guess they should have just done Johnson 316. Don't die. In fact, I hope they'll make Johnson 316 don't die shirts because that's who he should become. Um, all right. So I was looking the other day because I saw that Brian Johnson finally started to sell something and me and you had made a prediction. About 6 months, a year ago, we said, you know what? I don't think Brian's doing this for the money. I don't think he's doing this for the fame, although he's going to make a lot of money. And I'm sure the fame, you know, the attention feels good in the moment.

Very obvious prediction.

Very obvious prediction. But we said, dude, is this the greatest pre, like pre-launch marketing stunt ever? Because what he did was he basically turned himself into a character. And a lot of people have done this in the fitness niche, but he's not a fitness influencer. He, he branded himself as a longevity influencer, a live forever, a don't die influencer. And he spent a couple million bucks on tests and content and building his brand. He came on pods like ours and you could look at Google Trends. You could see the interest in Bryan Johnson growing over time. Actually, we should map out when our podcast was with him on that trend, because I'm curious where that was. And he has built an amazing following and he's doing everything you should do as an influencer. Not that he wants to be an influencer, but he's doing everything you should do. Like, I don't know if you've seen his meetups that he's having lately, these like runs that he's doing.

Yeah, they look awesome.

He's taking people and they chant like, don't die. And then they like run up a hill or something like that. And then they get at the bottom and they eat like just, there's a pot of lentils and they're all eating lentils. It's amazing. And so he's building his little cult and it's It's a great thing. So he came out with his first paid product. Did you see it?

It was, it's the meal service, right?

No, no, no. So he came out with like a, it's kind of like a meal service. It's like, basically it's a, a part one of his Blueprint diet as a ready, you know, ready to eat sort of like delivery package. I think you pay $330 a month and you get this thing. 12,000 people applied.

Wait, wait, wait. But what is it? How is it not? You, you said I was, you implied I was a little wrong with meal service. It is a meal service then, but it's just like powder, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's not like meal delivery. It's not like Blue Apron, but it is like, you know, the supplements and the drink and the whatever, whatever. It's like some version, some skimmed down version of the, um, uh, of his like anti-aging protocol. Got it. It's the Blueprint Self-Experimentation Study. And there's like a level 1 and there's, there's going to be a level 2 and level 3. So there's 67 interventions in this and it looks like there's a couple of powders, there's a bottle of olive oil, and then there's a bunch of pills.

I like all those things. Powders, pills, powder, pills, and oils.

What do you think Athletic Greens is at revenue-wise? They raised at $1.2 billion in valuation.

I bet they're at like $100, $150 is my guess, maybe $200 max.

Okay. Not yet, you know, but this is day one. Day one, come out the gate with $20 million and this is, he let in less than half of the demand that he had, right? So he could have been at $40 million if he, if he wanted to. Again, I don't think he's doing this for the money, but goddamn, that's a, that is an impressive start to a business. And it shows that I have this phrase now that I say, and my wife doesn't think it's cool and she's the only one I've tried it on, but I say this, I say all content is now marketing and all marketing is now content. And this is what Bryan Johnson did. He was putting out content. It happened to be marketing and that, that marketing is now leading to a lot of sales for his new protocol.

When you say that to your wife, I can just hear the world's loudest eye roll of like, shut the fuck up, Sean. That shit works on those fucking dorks that listen to you, but take out the fucking trash, Sean.

Did you warm up the mac and cheese like I asked you to or not? What are you talking about?

It's the same reason I bought shoes from Knees Over Toes guy. Right. I probably never bought shoes from any brand besides Nike in like 20 years. And then. I see this guy who's over 40 years old dunking a basketball. I see what he looked like before he was doing his thing and how he had knee surgeries. Undeniable proof is a very, very powerful lever. This guy literally just does like a somersault, then he gets up and dunks the basketball and he's like this 45-year-old white guy.

Which shoes?

By the way, I also bought Knees Over Toes shoes before he came out with that shoe company. He was always wearing these other shoes and I also bought them.

I also bought those. That white shoe that looks like it's made of sand. That's like $70 or something. $45. Couldn't even really get it on. I have like a thick American foot or something. It's like, it doesn't fit in this like European shoe.

Dude, I wore the shit out of them. I love those shoes. I like, I remember seeing the picture and like Googling like, what are those shoes?

They're not very comfortable. They look cool though.

What do they look great?

They're like Fouier or something like that.

Like Fugazi or it's like starts with an F.

I love the Fugazis too, man. They were, they were Fugazi as hell.

Um, can I do a quick Thrill the Shill by the way?

Okay, go.

All right. So basically at Hampton, we've got access to all this data. And so in order to grow, we decide, I love data. You know, they say data is the new oil. I already mentioned I love oil. I don't know how to, I don't know how to make money off of it yet, but somehow oil is good. We've been doing these surveys where we survey different industries and we get benchmarks for different, uh, different industries. Right now we just did one on agencies. And so we did this thing where we surveyed 60 agencies. They gave us all their revenue, all their profit. And we did like this cool survey where we show here's the benchmarks for profit, uh, per employee, revenue per employee. You can find it at, if you just go to joinhampton.com. And then you go to our blog, you'll see the surveys. We did one on wealth. So like people say their net worth, how much money they're spending each month, how much income they're making each month, how much they're working each week. We just did one on agencies. So if you're an agency owner, check it out. But more so that's, that's the shill. Here's the thrill part. I think, Sean, that if I, if I decide to do this, have you ever heard of the, have you ever, I think this could work. Have you ever heard of like benchmarking? Like I, I didn't know anything about this. Industry. Do you know anything about benchmarking?

Yeah, of course.

I didn't know that people would ever pay for this. And so there's the most common form of benchmarking is salary benchmarking. So there's a company called Salary.com, and then there's like 10 or 20 other ones who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever. I think in a couple of years, if I get enough data, I think we could— I can spin this off and create a data company where I do benchmarking for different industries. And the problem that we'll be solving is, let's say that you're an agency, let's say you're an e-com business and you're above $50 million in revenue. You want to know, are we spending the right amount for ads? Are we spending the right amount for employees? Whatever. I think we can build a cool data business off of this. So that's the Thrill the Shill, but I just wanted to call my shot and say, maybe eventually, I think we're going to do this.

I don't think it's calling your shot if you say maybe eventually. Calling your shot is I'm going to do this. That's like— it's like the only requirement of calling your shot is to say I'm gonna do this. Not call my shot if I so happen to be— If I so happen to do this, which you probably won't, but it could kind of work.

It's like if Babe Ruth just went like this instead of the point he just went like, hey, he kinda shrugged. He was good too. Just might have done that. You just laid his hand.

He's like, uh, yeah dude also. You reminded me of something. I don't mean to rain on your thrill or your shill here, but do you remember, have you seen these leaked? I'm sure you've seen this because we're both internet, like, what's it called? Like the people who look for fossils or whatever, archaeologists. When Mark Zuckerberg had his old, like, AIM messages leaked when he was 19 years old starting Facebook.

And he goes— Where he's like, these effing idiots are actually downloading this stuff.

Here's the transcript. He goes, He just DMs a friend just because he can't wait to brag. He goes, yeah, so if you ever need anyone, if you ever need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, social security numbers. And his friend goes, what? How did you manage that one? People just submitted it. I don't know why. They quote, trust me, dumb fucks. This is Sam in his Slack about Hampton. He's like, yeah, every agency just submitted their profits, their revenues, their growth tactics. They trust me.

For the record, I want to say—

You're like the next Zuck, dude.

Dude, I want to say I have access to zero of the documents that people submit for in order to join Hampton. I've got zero access. I purposely did this just like for years. I purposely didn't ask your name of your e-com business. I just like, I don't want to know because I don't want to accidentally say anything. I have zero access to this, not only because I don't want to say anything, and also because I just literally don't know how to, you know, like use computers and like log in and I don't have a password.

That was the equivalent of, uh, you know, no habla inglés.

Like, oh, I got pulled over.

I don't even speak. I don't even know how to use my computer. I can't access the stuff. Trust me. All right. Let me stop making funny about that. Let's, let's move on. Let's do another one.

Draw Something was the game that everybody played.

And it, I think he had a multi-hundred million dollar exit. I think this is right now about to happen with the OpenAI like plugin store. It's really fascinating what's happening.

I thought this was interesting. You asked the guy or somebody asked the founder. He said, I think it's going to be something between like more than the Chrome extensions market, but less than the App Store. You know, short term, it's awesome for marketing and functionality for users. Um, and OpenAI is footing the bill on a lot of the compute costs. Um, in the medium term, we have 2x the usage of the next biggest GPT. And I think Canva is the next. So this is the number one GPT.

Yeah. Yeah. It's taking off. And these guys, they're smart guys, but it was still when they were starting their company, once we invested, it was like, uh, I don't know, hopefully we'll figure it out. And there was a time where I was like, You guys better figure this out soon. Like, I don't know if this is going to work out. And then this inflection happened. This change happened.

Dude, this product is awesome. I just went to their site. I didn't do the ChatGPT thing, but just their app is really cool. So you go there, you ask any question. So I just did, are microplastics dangerous for humans? And then it has all these papers, but then you hit synthesize, which I think is the credits that you have to buy if you, but you start with 20 free credits. And it says, summary, we looked at 10 papers. The study suggests microplastics are dangerous for humans and they carry toxic chemicals. Contaminate ecosystems and are linked to various health issues, including cancers and immune system disruptions. And then it says, we looked at the 14 papers. Yes was 43% of the time, possibly 57% of the time, no, 0% of the time. And that was the, like, that was the thing. And then you could see below each specific paper and it's like tagged like, oh, this is a rigorous journal. This is highly cited. And you can kind of get AI to summarize each of those papers. This is This is a sick, like, this is a sick product.

It's cool. And it, but by the way, just like all great stuff, it did not start that way.

I'm mad you didn't tell me about this. This is, uh, I, why didn't I invest in this?

This is great. It wasn't obvious. By the way, it's still not obvious. This company, just like any, any startup, it could still totally fail and not work.

No, but it's a very interesting bet, right? Like to do a verticalized Google specifically for scientific papers and AI being the, the, the why now of what you could do differently than you could do before. This makes a lot of sense.

And it was, uh, I'll give the shout out. It's consensus.app. That's her website. But the point being, A, Consensus is great. I think it's actually going to work out. And these guys, uh, they, they kind of put their head down for like 24 months and like are really starting to figure out there's going to be a lot of stuff just like them on the ChatGPT store. Because I think when we invested in them, I don't remember exactly. I'm almost positive the word AI didn't come up one time. Like it wasn't like, it was like, we have this, like, we know what the outcome that we want to, what we want it to be, but we're not entirely sure how we're going to come to that. And then they started figuring out AI got more popular. And then this ChatGPT store opened up and they're like, boom, we found the path. And I think that path is opened right now. Now it's more competitive than, than the App Store and it's more competitive than Chrome because there's more people who are doing this stuff. OpenAI is already huge, but that inflection is happening right now. This is one of those things that's happening in real time. And I wanted to call out because I think OpenAI even said, we don't even know how, what payment terms we're going to give these people. Like we're, they're still all figuring it out. But this is happening this second right now. There's an opportunity here for a lot of different companies.

They're like around, like, you know, some celebrity relationship. They're like, oh, we don't, we don't know. We don't want to put a label on it yet. We're just exploring each other and figuring out, you know, who we are together and individually.

Yeah, it's definitely trying to figure it out. Have you seen, um, Perplexity? Have you used Perplexity?

I don't like it. I don't know why people are going nuts for it.

It's pretty cool. It's just like OpenAI, but for some reason it's like has a science bent.

That's one of these companies. I don't know. I don't know much about it. This is an uninformed opinion, but I feel like every VC who missed, like, you can't get into OpenAI, or if you could get in now, it's at $100 billion valuation. There's not much money to be made as an investor there. And so all the capital, you know, realized all the investors realized, holy shit, this is the big thing. And they're like, what's the next best competitor? And they're like, all right, uh, Stable Diffusion and Perplexity and the next thing and the next thing. And they get these super inflated valuations and I don't know, I'm not really a believer in that. I think those get way ahead of the skis and I just seen that story many times. This happened in crypto, this happened in, you know, when mobile was happening and you would get, you know, for every Instagram, you would then get the 10 super funded other apps that didn't make any sense. And yeah, I would take the under or I would short that.

After the pod, go to your email and type in Consensus. I'm almost positive that I heard about this company and you were CC'd on the email. Just, I just want to put that out there. I, I, it was a 2002, it was 2 years ago. I'm almost positive.

You're like, after the pod, take some lighter fluid, pour it over your body, light it back, and hope no one finds what, finds out what happens.

We're going to burn it down and hide it.

Can I do a rant about something? So I've had a realization that my world, like a lot of the content I'm consuming was algorithmic. All right. That's pretty obvious.

You, everyone, what does that mean? Just Twitter, TikTok, whatever. Yeah.

You follow 13,000 people on, on Twitter.

The trick is you don't go to Twitter. Right?

You see, what do you do?

Well, Twitter's not a great place for this, right? Because if you go to Twitter, you're gonna get your first thing, you're gonna be served up. This is the feed and you're gonna start scrolling.

What are you gonna start reading books? That's very unlike you.

So I make a little list. I say, you know what? I'm curious how this started, or I'm, I wanna learn more about this. And then I'll go to YouTube or Google or wherever looking for that. But there's that adding that little paper step in between. Me and the internet has been very, very useful. And I learned a bunch of interesting things in the last 3 days. I got more out of the internet. So I'm just putting that out there for anybody who—

what's been on your list?

I'll give you an example. I was doing research for one thing, and I saw this name. Do you know this guy, Eric Van Veen?

Yes, he's amazing. I have got him. Oh wait, are you talking about Ricky Van Veen or Eric?

Uh, oh, maybe he's Ricky.

Ricky Van Winkle. Ricky.

Facebook guy?

Yeah, Facebook.

Dude, dreamy.

Super dreamy. This guy's dreamy as shit. I've talked to him a bunch via email a handful of times.

He looks like the internet Pete Buttigieg or something.

No, man, this guy's great.

So this guy created CollegeHumor.

Yeah.

And then he created a couple other things. So what did he create? He created CollegeHumor and then he but he created a few other things like Cracked or whatever. Then he bundled it up, sold it to IAC. It was running media at IAC.

And then you're forgetting the biggest thing they started. Which one? So at CollegeHumor, this was like pre-YouTube days. They create— this was like eBombs World days. They created a better way to host videos. Yeah. And that's what Vimeo is, which they sold to IAC. IAC spun off and became a billion-dollar-plus publicly traded company.

So creates Vimeo, creates CollegeHumor, goes to IAC. IAC is a super interesting company with like a very cool pedigree of people that come out of it. Like Tinder came out of IAC. Um, you know, there's, there's a bunch of really interesting things about IAC. They're sort of like the, they're the Procter Gamble of the internet. They're a conglomerate of internet sites, mostly media.

And then Match.com, I think, came out of there.

Now he's head of like head of like video or head of creative content at Facebook. And I was like, oh, this guy's interesting. I kind of just noted it because I think I was thinking about CollegeHumor. And so I just said, who's behind that? What are they doing now? And I think this, this, what are they doing now has been one of my threads. So I'll think of something that was cool and I'll be like, where do they go? I haven't heard about their new album. What are they working on? And I'll go look at that. And that's just a very, it's a very useful way to go look at things.

So by the way, Ricky, Ricky ended up marrying, and I don't think they're together anymore, but he, like, if you just, you could just Google like tabloids or whatever, he married Allison Williams, you know, the famous like actress whose father is Brian Williams, the famous newscaster. And if you Google his name, the guy's just like hanging out with like all these celebrities and stuff. And he's like, seems so cool. Like this guy's dreamy as shit.

We acknowledge that. So anyways, what's my point? So I'm, I'm, I'm, I have a list of cool companies or cool things that were built, you know, 10 years ago. And I'm wondering, what are those people doing now? CollegeHumor was one of them. So I go look at this guy and then I'm like, I'm researching Vimeo and I'm looking at him. And then I'm like, he gave this talk in 2008 at this media conference. And then he comes back again 8 years later. I don't know if you've ever seen this talk, but it's a, it's a, I mean, it gets no views on the internet, but for nerds like us who create media and content on the internet, it's very interesting to see. What somebody thought in 2008, which is like the iPhone has come out, but it hasn't changed the world yet. And like literally the presentation, he's like, yeah, kids on their BlackBerrys are not going to be doing XYZ. And back then, you know, when he created CollegeHumor, it became the number one comedy entertainment site on the internet, way bigger than Cartoon Network and all these other like incumbents. Okay. That's interesting. Then he comes back 8 years later and he's like, here's what I got right. And here's what I got wrong. And one of the things he was talking about on it, he's like, He's like, at some point, people on the internet will stop leaving the internet. Like they won't, they'll stop using the internet as a springboard to go onto Netflix or onto get cast into a TV show or whatever. Like they'll realize that their YouTube channel is worth more than those shows and they won't want to leave to go do those. They won't view this as just a stepping stone. And that's happened. And he basically had like 4 or 5 predictions about where the world was going. He put up the, all the sites like Viral Nova and Upworthy and whatnot. He's like, right now, these are the hottest sites in the world. Their traffic is crushing ours and they're, they're getting more traffic than anybody, more traffic than God. He's like, I think all of this is going to zero. I think this is highly commoditized and it's not going to work for these reasons. He was absolutely correct. And so it was very interesting to learn from this guy who's kind of a master at what he does. And I've done this before with like, um, when I looked up all the infomercial kings. So the guys who created like, you know, Proactiv, that acne, uh, you know, medicine, like how did that story happen? Right. But if I just log on to the internet and I just take the, the, the last thing that somebody tweeted or the latest TikTok somebody uploaded, you know, I'm playing defense. I'm playing their game, not mine. Right. And so I'm just trying to have a little bit more intention when I, when I, when I use the internet. So, you know, I'm not the type who's just going to go, uh, like total digital detox and just not use the internet. But when I do use it, I'm trying to use it in a bit of a healthier way.

So Ricky, did he, he predicted that the viral novas of the world are good. He predicted that it was going to go to zero and they did.

Yeah.

Did I ever tell you the story about my partner Joe in Hampton? Um, and a bunch of other stuff. Did I tell you a story about Little Things?

You've mentioned it before that he got like really busy. Let me tell you this. Most trafficked Facebook referral, right? And then he had an offer to sell and he didn't take it or something. Yeah.

Oh, the lessons we learn. Unfortunately, that's, you know, that's like, uh, it's, it's cool to be like, yeah, you learn so much from failure, but it's like, God, sometimes it's so painful.

Yeah. He was basically, he posted this publicly. He was like, I was set to make $50 million and 3 weeks away from the closing, it went away. And I, he like has all these crazy stories about that.

What's he like to work with? Cause you picked him as your partner for Hampton. Uh, why'd you pick him?

He's the best, man. He's the best. He's the best. He's a harmonious partner. He's even keel. He's very easy.

Tell me about like the partnership dynamics, because you've told me about those. What is he, what's his edge? What's he great at? What's it, what is he like, what is he amazing at?

You ever hang out with Israeli guys and like Israeli guys have a culture of like they're quite competent because they served in the military and they're like really good at stuff. Oftentimes they're good at spotting opportunities because that's also part of the culture of like, just like negotiating well and like finding interesting deals. He is so good at spotting opportunities and he's technical and he's so fast. I've never met someone who's like significantly faster than I am at making stuff and going all in. And like, he'll just find an opportunity, he'll build a website for it, and he's like, yep, this is what I'm doing now. And he pounces so fast. I've never met someone who moves faster. One thing that we did that was so great, did you ever have this with Ben or any of your other partners where you do like a, um, you're like, look, before we like hop in bed and before we get married here, let's just sit down and map out what do you want your life to be like? What do you want in 5 years and 10 years? What do you want on a day-to-day basis? And you like write out like how you want to live, what you're willing to, uh, what you're willing to give up, what you're not willing to give up. Have you ever done that?

Not exactly, but you know, you told me you did that. I think there's a version of that that I do, but I'm not, I think everything changes. So I, you know, it sounded really great in theory and I think it's a useful exercise just to clarify your own thoughts, but I don't, I think people themselves are quite incongruent in general. Yeah. Well, yeah, you change, you change, but also you don't know what you want. And also you say one thing because it sounds good or you think you want it, but then something comes, you know, something comes up. And you're, you know, it's your stated preference versus revealed preference. I think it's very hard to get to people's revealed preferences, their true preferences or their true, um, their true, you know, desires or whatever. And so I think it's a good exercise to do, but I don't put as much weight in it as you did, I think.

Well, I think that, I think that A, it starts a really good conversation. So it was like, look, let's be transparent, just like you should with like your wife or girlfriend. You're like, let's talk about like what type of life that we potentially want and let's be very open about that. So I think that, that like creating that, like, let's just be very clear about, and we'll, we'll acknowledge that it will change. So I think it creates a great version of that. But Joe's also 42, I think he's older than me. And so I would think that at that age, he has a little bit of solidified the values that he stands for. And so it was helpful. I think if I did that exercise when I was 24, it would not have been good. In fact, I did do that exercise when I was 24 and it sucked. I said I wanted, you want to know what I said I wanted when I was 24? I said I want 10,000 employees. I go, wouldn't it be awesome if you had 10,000 employees? And then I hired 3 people and I'm like, shit went out the window. I'm like, yeah, that's, that's a no for me, dog. Like that ain't gonna work. But so I think if you're a little bit older and you have some experience, you might know a little bit more what you want. But when I was younger, no, that wouldn't have worked.

Who have you worked with that's high energy and like almost exhausts you because you're like, I can't keep up?

Suli's like that. Uh, he's super high energy, but not in an exhausting way. No, like I get energy from that. So it's all good.

I don't mean exhausting like they wear you out, but you're like, oh my God, dude, like you're, you're almost hard to keep up. You move so fast. That's inspiring.

Yeah, everybody that, yeah, it's a, but it's in a good way.

Um, like, yeah, I mean, in a good way.

And that they bring their own energy to the table. I'm not bringing it out of them. Ben is a fun, so Ben Levy, who's my current business partner, on the surface when you meet him, he's a more quiet guy. He's more reserved. He's not like, he doesn't come across like this huge booming personality, but Ben's got that energy where it comes out for him, like through text message or through like, you know, he'll just wake up and do something or he can't sleep at night because he's thinking about something. So energy reveals energy is not just being a wacky flailing arms guy. It's, do you have the, are you driven yourself? Do you take action quickly? Do you think about things all the time? Or are you, am I trying to force you to, to, am I dragging your brain into the conversation? And do you get excited about things? Are you, when an opportunity arises, does your, do you shift gears up? So energy is the first one. Then it's intelligence or competence, which is like, what are they great at? Oh, this person's great at selling. This person's great at building. This person's great at just pushing the ball forward every day, whatever it is. And then the last one, which is integrity, is the hardest one to get a feel for, which is how's this person going to treat me when they have the opportunity to be selfish? Will they be selfish when they have the opportunity to be selfish? And it's very, very hard to know that. You can kind of only talk to people they've worked with before or ask them questions and try to see if they're, they're pretty honest about that. And then I just work with them on something first before we commit. So it's like, We have that conversation, sure. But let's like, you know, I would always trade an experience for a belief. And if I can have an experience working with you on something for 3 weeks, that's going to be way better than me trying to put, take a leap of faith on a bunch of things you said, or you wrote down in a Google Doc.

Did you just make up that word or that phrase?

Tony Robbins special, baby.

Oh, I was going to say that's, that's yours now. Do you, uh, what, how late into the evening are you working on? Business stuff versus family time or fitness or whatever else there is?

I basically, I work out in the middle of the day. So I work about 2 PM. So it's basically like I've done enough where I could stop working. I wake up and I work. I wake up, I do my morning routine, then I work and then I take a break to work out and then I'll either just, if I've done enough that day, I'll just play with my kids. I'll start playing with them and just hang out. If I haven't, I'll do another hour or two of work. And then I do family time till about, till they go to bed. So they're, you know, usually fully asleep 8:30 or 9:00. And then I chill out slash work, one of the two. They're both kind of the same to me. So sometimes it's just like watching a show. Sometimes it's working or reading something and I'll do that till 11 or 12 and I go to sleep.

But between that 11 or between kids going to sleep and you going to bed, are you on the phone talking to people ever?

No, no, no. That's me time. That's, uh, me on the internet. Uh, I'm not talking to people. No. I, uh, I've got a bunch of friends who are like that and they'll like, even my wife, she'll try to talk and I will be like, I'm doing no talking. That's my favorite. I'm doing no talking right now. It's a, it's a nice way of saying like, I don't want to talk to you. I'm doing no talking.

That's it. We do this thing. There's like this like unspoken rule at my house where like at 8 or 9 when she wants to like ask me like, hey, what dates do you want to go, uh, to this place? And I just mumble, I go, that means like, dude, I just shopped at IKEA all day. I'm overwhelmed. I can't look at anything. I can't think. Don't ask me a date. I'm not thinking about anything. You know, we've been, you know what we've been doing lately? It's fucking Legos. Have you ever done Legos?

I've never done Legos. I, I have a whole separate pod topic about adult Legos because I think it's a thing and you're one of those. So we should talk. We should actually do a full segment on it.

I'm so into it. I'm so into it. That's all I'll say. I am so— I just got into it in November. I'm a LEGO guy now. I love it.

Okay, we're gonna talk about that next time. I gotta jump. Uh, this has been good. This is the pod. That's the pod.

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.