The AI App Doing $6M With 1 Employee

And I'm like, yeah, I could see how this would work. If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids with a third on the way, 36-year-old me, dude, 17-year-old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening. So the general trend here is basically that. 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 a Rolex. Sam, notice anything different about me today?

You're wearing a college shirt.

Do you know what that's called nowadays, Sam?

No.

It's called lookmaxing. Have you ever heard this term?

I've seen, uh, Genius CEO use the phrase lookmaxing.

Yes. Okay, so I want to talk to you about lookmaxing because I saw this app called YouMax. And so I download it, it says, are you male or female? I say, okay, male. It says 1 million, 1 million people have done this on Umax. Uh, are you ready? And I'm like, yeah, I'm ready. And so then it says, take a picture of your face right now and I'm going to score you on how ugly you are. So your boy takes a bed selfie. Then it's like, hey, you want your score? Pay $3.99. And I'm like, gladly, sir. Take my money. Apple Pay $3.99. And, um, I'm a 69 overall, Sam. I just found that out this morning that I'm— it's something I've been wondering my whole life really is where am I? And I am a 69 overall. I am better looking than 49% of the people, which means the majority of people are better looking than me. And then what's interesting about this, so wait, that math doesn't work out.

You're not better. 49% was there 110% of people?

No, I'm better than 49. 51 are better than me.

Well, why are you a 69 then? Shouldn't you be a 51%?

No, I don't know. Yeah, that, that doesn't make sense. But yeah, 69 overall. Okay, so I got a 69, uh, but my potential is an 83. Hmm. I'm intrigued. Tell me more, app. And so the app basically then rates me on my jawline, masculinity, my grooming, my skin quality, my hair.

Just from that one selfie of you in bed?

It's AI. It's AI. Two, two. Do you take a side profile and then you take a front profile?

What do they say about your jawline? You got a good jawline?

Oh dude, jawline 69, skin quality 68, masculinity 82. Nice. Your boy's a man. Yeah.

You know you're a man when you have to use an app to tell you you are a man.

So what's amazing about this app, this app, uh, I saw it on Twitter. Um, somebody tweeted out an interview with the founder and, um, he's hanging out on the subreddits and I don't know if you've seen, but like on Reddit, These, uh, like here's, if you go to the beauty and grooming category, so like there can be a bunch of Reddits in here. Number 3 and number 5 are both this. Number 3 is Lookmaxing Advice and number 5 is Male Grooming with 744,000 members. And so these are 3 of the top 5 subreddits. So he's hanging out in these and basically what people do is they would go post—

what's male grooming? Just pictures of pubes?

No, it's your hair, your beard, your face.

It's your, your, your, your, your, ah, that type of grooming.

All that. Got it.

Okay. And so you would post a photo of yourself and you would say, hey, um, give me some advice. How can I look better? Strangers of Reddit, uh, you know, my family, they all just tell me, oh, you're beautiful, honey. Don't worry. At school, I'm too embarrassed to ask. You know, I don't want to look like a loser, but on Reddit, we're all losers here. It's all good. And so they, they post a photo and they say, what can I do better? People give advice. So what this guy did was he turned that into an app. He's like, let me sprinkle a little AI on this, turn this into an app. The app does 3.5 million downloads. He's making $6 million in ARR on this app right now, $6 million ARR run rate. The app costs $3.99 a week when you unlock your thing. So I think it's like one of these, like you pay to unlock because, oh my God, I really want to know. And then you forget to unsubscribe is, you know, probably the reality, but you're supposed to do a daily update. As you take the steps they recommend. So for example, uh, now this part, the first part was me doing it for science. The second part was me being like, eh, you know, it's got a point here. So I click in and it's like, hey, you know, your first, your, he, he says your glow up routine. And it says first priority is skincare. How are you gonna make your skincare better? So I click it and it says easiest way to improve your skin is limit your processed foods, opt for meats and natural produce, work out 5 times a week. And wash your face with warm water in the morning and evening. That's the easy mode. It says the best mode is you should clean your face in the shower, moisturize after the shower, exfoliate 2 or 3 times a week. And it says products for you. And then there's like some, um, wow, some skincare product. And I went and I immediately was like, oh, let me buy this shit. So I bought this $20, um, thing. And it's not like their product. It's like just a link to Amazon of CeraVe's like moisturizer after shower or something like that. And I'm like, yeah, I could see how this would work if this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids with a third on the way, 36-year-old me, dude, 17-year-old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening. So the general trend here is basically that, um, guys who are, you know, guys, it's like acceptable to be like, how do I, um, how do I look better? And normally the answer was just, we go to the gym. That was like the societal norm was you could become a gym bro and you're not seen as doing anything weird or lame or whatever. It's like acceptable. And now guys are like, cool, but what about from the neck up? What am I gonna do about that? And, um, honestly, Sam, this is my greatest fear come true. And I— the greatest fear is for, for years, decades, centuries, and millennia, men have had a truce. And the truce is this. Beauty's all relative, and if you don't try, I won't try. And while women had to put on makeup and wear heels and do lip fillers, and then they started— it became a beauty contest, and they all had to continue to keep up with whatever the norms were. Guys were like, look, I'm not doing shit to my face. So yeah, me neither, bro. I'm not doing nothing. It is what it is. I take it or leave it as is conditioned. And now as soon as people really start doing this, It's going to become an arms race. Everybody's going to have to do it.

Do you do anything for your face?

Nothing, dude. I've not— no lotion, no moisturizer, no skincare routine. I've never applied a cream in my life. I'm not even really sure what you would do if you put it on. Like, what are you supposed to do? I have no idea.

Yeah, I've never done it either, but since I married a Black woman, I now have tons of like lotions and all this crap like in my house, and I'm slowly starting to like learn a little bit about it.

Dude, you're a muggle. That stuff, that's for wizards. It doesn't— it doesn't work. No, I've been—

my eyes have open to the Korean skincare routine. I'm like slowly understanding what all this stuff means, and I want to use it, but I've never, I've never really gotten into it until recently where I started seeing some wrinkles, and I'm like, all right, I think I can learn now. And the problem is, is that like when you see issues, like, you know, you should have done something like 5 years ago, uh, but this is amazing that this guy's doing it. It's one guy.

When did he launch it?

People shared this in my, uh, work Slack and they were like,, you know, trying to get us to use it. And I was like, this is like asking me to step on the scale a few days after Thanksgiving. Like, I'm just not going to happen. Ignorance, ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know. I don't want to know the reality. Um, but this is awesome. I guess I'll, I guess I'll use it. Are you paying $3.99?

Oh yeah. I'm paying $3.99. Honestly, I would have been happy to go to $7.99. I'm just saying that out loud. So I asked a friend and I said, I said under the, under anonymity, I said, he, I know, I was like, I know he knows about this kind of the trend, the space. He's younger. He's more, into TikTok and stuff like that. I was like, can you give me your honest reaction? What are your thoughts on this? And he said, he said, well, to most older guys, this movement just seems completely bewildering. Like, what are young guys doing nowadays? But it makes sense. He goes, it's a response to men generally being rejected and cast aside. We can now take ownership and pride in how we look. Can you max out your natural genetics and ultimately become a more desirable person? You know, societally, men caring about their looks has been viewed negatively, narcissistically, seen as lame, or even gay. But now the view of the narrative is shifting where they're just frustrated and they want to be able to, you know, to be their most attractive self. I can see this trend continuing to grow. It's already big in Korea with the Korean beauty trend. Basically, like in Korea, I think men's beauty products are like, you know, on par or close to on par with women's beauty products. And he also pointed out an interesting thing, which is that, I don't know if you're not a big sports guy, but two of the most famous college athletes, not named Caitlin Clark, the two most famous male college athletes are, there is this guy named Caleb Williams. He was the quarterback at USC. So imagine the most alpha male position in the country. You are the quarterback of USC in LA. You are the, you're the guy. And he's this big athletic guy, but he would paint his nails and he would get, he got criticized for it and people were like, oh man, I don't want to draft, like, because he's in the draft right now, but I don't want my team drafting a quarterback who cares about that stuff. Like, I want a tough guy. And people were, and other people were like, what are you talking about? Why are you overreacting? The guy paints his nails. So what? And then there's a guard at Duke. So Duke's probably the number one basketball program in the country. And this guy, Jared McCain, built a huge following on TikTok by doing goofy TikTok dances where he's laughing and happy. Like even if they would lose a game, you know, a day later he would still do this and he paints his nails and like the opposing teams would harass him in the crowd every game calling him all sorts of names. But he was like, dude, I'm just doing me. I'm having fun. He's like, oh yeah, it's a superstitious thing. I did it once. I had a good game, so I decided to keep doing it. And he's like, I don't know. I like it. It's fun. What's the big deal? And at first he got like a lot of negative backlash, but then over time, over the course of the year on TikTok, this guy amassed like 1 or 2 million TikTok followers. I think he was one of the highest paid because, you know, college athletes can get paid now. So he's one of the highest paid NIL athletes because he was getting sponsorships from beauty companies. Like the nail polish companies are sponsoring him, you know, paying this guy, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to post a simple 10-second TikTok. And so in the end, he had the last laugh and he, you know, for someone like me, I became a huge fan of this guy just because he was so unafraid to be himself. And that was, you know, obviously a very, that's a very attractive trait in general.

Dude, this is amazing. By the way, I, when I was in my like boxing phase, my boxing instructor who was like a tough guy and would kick my ass all the time, he wore nail polish all the time. And I was like, why are you doing that? And he was 25 and he was like, it's a thing. It's cool. It's what people do. And I was amazed by that. You know, I remember as a kid, you would paint like a fingernail black as a punk rocker. But now it's like, it's mainstream. I think, I think it's cool. By the way, I just downloaded Umax and I just took my pictures. I just clicked the button that says, give me the results.

Oh yeah, I know, I know. I didn't even want to do this. It's not real. This isn't real.

This isn't real. This, it's not real.

Your jawline's fantastic. I could tell you that right now. At 89. Oh my God. You are maxed, sir.

Wait, what? My masculinity is a 93. My skin quality— no, it's just good lighting. It gave me a 94. My skin quality is not that good. And I'm frankly, I should be in this.

You're doing that thing that women do where you're like, no, no, this little thing I bought. Oh no, this was on sale at Target. You know, you're immediately going into that mode. That's hilarious. It's a classic hot guy thing to do.

I, I, dude, if I'm hot, I mean, that's just not the reality. Overall 89, potential is 95. Uh, masculinity 93, jawline 90, cheekbones 87. I got some work to do.

Uh, what are you going to do? Shave them?

Yeah. What do you do? I don't know. With your eyebrows, I guess get them plucked. I don't know. This is a, this is a good app. I'm going to have to take pictures without good lighting and actually get a realistic rating. Uh, I just paid my $3.99. I'm into it. Kudos to this guy.

I have a few spinoff business ideas for this. So I think that, um, I don't know if you've seen, but me, you know what med spas are? These things are booming.

No, what's a med spa?

Med spas are absolutely booming. If you don't know about 'em, we should do a separate segment altogether about them. But basically it's like microblading, you know, you get your Botox, you get your lip filler. I don't know what doesn't happen there, but it's stuff like that. Basically the optional aesthetic glow up type of stuff that you could do that's beyond manicure, pedicure, and like, you know, hair blow dryer or whatever.

Has your wife, by the way, Sean, has your wife ever said that she wants to get Botox? And if she has, what has your reaction been?

She has said it. She's like, oh yeah, I want to do it someday. And I'm like, are you just floating? She's like, floats it out. There's a little trial balloon just to see how it feels, I feel. And I'm like, what? No, you don't need that. Again, I just go into that mode. And I'm, but like genuinely, like, I, you know, I have always told her I prefer her like completely without makeup. I think she looks way better that way. And so I've been telling her that for like, you know, a decade, but she's, she's like, I'm not doing it for you, you idiot. I know you like me. Like, she's like, this has nothing to do with you.

Every man, every man has had that same response. My wife will say it too, and I go, no, just age normally. You look great, just be normal. And so I think every man has said the exact same thing about women and Botox. It's very funny. They get this Botox, and I think most every man that I've spoke to, they're like, I don't give a shit, just age.

Also, it goes like, it's not even just like, oh, you're fine without it. It's like, actually, don't get Simon Cowell face. Like, have you seen Simon Cowell?

Yes, they all look like cats, like Cheshire cats. It's weird, man. They all look the same.

It's like they go to the Madame Tussauds wax factory and At some point it's like, it look, you look fine, you look good. Oh, you look better. Oh my God, you look like non-human. And then they never recover from then. So there's, so there's some stuff there that's like a little scary to me.

They all look like the ladies on the Desperate Housewives or whatever it's called, like the housewife reality shows. I, I can't, I don't like that look. And I think most men do not like that look. So that's a PSA for the women listening. Uh, and what was the, okay, med spas. That's cool.

Okay. Um, I think influencer content on this niche is gonna become really big, so I think that anytime you have a new generation, anytime there's a learning curve and there's like a trust gap and there's, you know, it's a, it's a new norm that's being established. You need your, you need your shepherds that are going to guide you. You need your Sherpas that'll take you up the mountain. And so I think that, um, anybody who goes all in on this, like, uh, in terms of their social content, you know, there's going to be some, you know, 21-year-old dude who all the, you know, 15 to 19-year-old dudes look up to, or even actually 15 to 24-year-old dudes look up to. Because he's going to show his before and after. And I think that there's going to be room for— and I'm sure this already exists. I'm just— I don't, I don't even open up Instagram, so I'm probably out of the loop on this. But I think there's going to be some really big influencers that go into this space because they're going to hold the keys. Whatever products they recommend, whatever procedures they recommend, whatever brands they recommend, that's where the masses are going to go because you're in a low trust environment. You don't know anything. And so you're going to need that. So I think that's an opportunity here. Um, more AI-driven apps. I think, I think another person could create Umax right now and get the same exact result.

I agree.

This is insane. And in Hampton, uh, we have this company is called For Them and their name is Kylo and they have a company that makes clothing that are like unisex and They're killing it. And if you would have told me that this company was going to take off 5 years ago, I would have been like, you're insane. They are killing it. And they are kind of pouncing on this exact same niche of men who are androgynous. You know what I'm saying? Like this, uh, Timothée Chalamet. My wife said she likes Timothée Chalamet and I'm like, what? Really? Timothée Chalamet? That guy? Like it's these feminine men are kind of having their moment at the, at the moment, which I guess they always have, right? Like Mick Jagger is basically that. Prince, Prince is that, you know, feminine men have always kind of killed it in the game, but this brand is one of those brands that I didn't think would be a thing and it is. And so I'm on board with what you're saying.

So I'm lookmaxing now. All right. I mean, I'm in, I'm in on the trend. I'm going to ride this. I'm going to relate to my fellow, you know, 17-year-olds and, and I'm going to see what happens.

This is great, dude. Good find. I can't believe this Umax thing is as big as it is. I had coworkers share it with me today. You brought it up. It must be like Going everywhere then.

Well, someone did an interview with the founder and did a good like Twitter summary of it. So I think it was just like a tweet that like a lot of people saw today.

God bless them. God bless America. God bless capitalism, right? I would have thought that this was like some Chinese app because wasn't there a Chinese app recently that was like, here's what you would look like if you were better looking?

Well, yeah, I thought when I first downloaded, I thought it was gonna be like Facetune. I thought it was gonna be, you take a picture, it makes your picture look better. This is like, no, no, no, the real face. We're going to try to make your real face look better. By the way, I, we should shout out the person who, who did it. Uh, A, A, Atpie, I think is that Atpie? I don't know how you say her, the, the name of the person who did the podcast interview, but shout out to them. That was good, good find.

Good interview. By the way, the tagline for this app is become hot. It just says Umax-becomehot. This is, uh, these guys are just digging right at every insecurity we have. I love it. All right, let me tell you about a, a trend that's happening as well. So this will be like the trends episode. So UMAX is happening right now. I want to tell you about a trend that's happening as we speak. Before we get to the trend, and this is recent, some news just happened, but before we get to that trend, I need to tell you the background. So have you heard of this company called DuPont? It's a large chemical company. So in the 1940s, they were tasked by the government of coming up with a sealant for atomic bombs. So basically atomic bombs needed some type of like sealant for gaskets. Gaskets are the parts that put two pipes together so nothing leaks.

Talk about a job you don't want to fuck up.

Yes. And I never understood it until now.

I never understood it either. They just said it's bad. And if you look at your nonstick pans, what you're going to notice is that there's chips in it. There's like little chips from where you like put your fork or knife on it and it like chipped that little piece of Teflon and it like went into your food. You're basically consuming this stuff, but it's in plastic water bottles. It's in everything. And you actually hung out with Joe Gebbia recently, the founder of Airbnb, and he said that he only drinks a certain type of water. And I looked up that water company. What was it called?

Aquapana.

Aquapana was one of the few water companies that did not, they did not detect PFAS in the water. And the implications of this are quite big. So have you heard about men having like really low sperm counts right now and that's impacting fertility? Well, one of the hypothesis is, is that if your mother consumed this stuff, you, it, it, the studies have shown that the men are likely to have lower sperm counts, later in life. And so there's all these implications where people are getting cancer right now at super high rates. And there's rumblings that maybe this is called from PFAS. And so the reason I'm bringing this up, obviously this is a big deal and it freaked me out as a consumer because by the way, the takeaway of this is basically you can't avoid it and you're screwed.

Uh, that's basically, oh God, that's kind of the, I mean, it's in everything.

It's in floss. It's in everything. And once it's there, it's there. And so our generation might just be screwed. But the reason why this interests me is there's a common theme of hippie or like fringe people being interested in something and it becoming mainstream and popular in the next 10, 15 years.

Hippies are just innovators.

They really are innovators. Yeah. Like Birkenstocks are cool now. I mean, like they start stuff early. My opinion is right now is a wonderful time to get into this business.. And I was Googling which products are PFAS-free. I couldn't find a decent website. There's one website called mommovation.com. This lady's been blogging about this since 2009 and she does like crazy tests on like different products. So it'll be like, which Ziploc bags are PFAS-free? And she basically does all this analysis where she sends these plastic bags to the lab. And then her conclusion is None. None are PFAS-free. I don't have any good recommendations for this.

Bravo, shout out to her. How long has she been doing this?

2009.

This is amazing.

And she has a rabid fan base.

Forever Chemicals in contact lenses. Damn it.

No.

Wow. This is, uh, this is wild, dude. It's frightening. Not only was this a good segment, you might have saved my life and many people's lives by bringing this. Uh, what a story. Uh, I did not— I had heard of PFAS because I tried to buy a, uh, like a kid's bed and I was like, how come checkout's not working? And I got so frustrated. I was like, why is this not like purchasing? It's like, oh, I contacted help. It's like, oh, you're in, you're in California. We can't ship PFAS, uh, uh, like anything that contains PFAS to California. And I was like, oh God, how annoying. Uh, what is that? What do you mean we can't take it? You can't ship it to California. I didn't realize what I was, uh, what I was angry at. I should have been happy about. And why are these in, you know, I guess why are these in beds? Why do beds need these? Why do I, should I sleep in these forever chemicals?

Most of the paint you have in your home have it as well. And so it's like a, it's a sealant is what it is.

We need to clip this because I think in, in 2, 3 years it's gonna be, we're gonna see that. Look, I'm looking at these categories, like, so for example, she, she's testing, you know, contact lenses, makeup, dental floss, toilet paper, uh, tampons, uh, wrappers, um, oils, pans, activewear, all these different categories. You know, that's just like a, a, a minefield of opportunity to go through and build PFAS-free alternatives and popularize this story. The story that you told at the beginning is the story that needs to be told more, right? I think it's one thing to say has PFAS. It's another thing to say, do you know what that is? Do you know how bad this is? Do you want your kid to be born with one nostril? How many nostrils do you want your kid to have? Right? Like that's all somebody needs to say. And if you tell that story well, that's going to be incredibly powerful.

Well, this is why when I read this, I was like, obviously this is bad, but the business side of my brain was like, This is advertising gold. Like, I'm like an HVAC guy during a heat wave. I'm like, this is, this is, this is gold.

Is that our version of kid in a candy store? Yeah. I'm like an HVAC operator during a heat wave. Yeah.

Like, it was gold when I read this stuff. And the reason being is Forever Chemicals, awesome branding. They're already branding it for us. That's a great point.

Kind of. I feel like that almost sounds like, I don't know, there's like a slight positive twist.

Is that good?

It'll last forever. Diamonds are forever. Oh, great. You know, like I kind of want it to be a little more dangerous, right? Like a little more off-putting.

Well, I just think that, so there's a lot of research, but I think a lot of, a lot of people actually, when I was reading the research, there's some debate over it and I don't know why there's too much debate over it. I wasn't able to like read all of the research, but there's some debate as to how dangerous they are and in which setting. But I still think you can, this sounds manipulative, but you can use fear to be like, just don't have any of it. And so for example, I remember I was pretty nervous about this shit and so I was looking just for cotton-only clothing. So clothing that is just plain cotton, but you look at which, what your clothing is like Lululemon. I mean, it all has PFAS in it. And so it's been quite challenging. And if you Google PFAS free products, you're basically just going to come across a bunch of subreddits. And so it's still quite niche and grassrootsy. There's not like a good website that refers you to different products. There's this Momivation website, but like it's still kind of a messy website and kind of confusing and hard to read. They're not just telling me what to buy and how to live my life. They're kind of telling the science behind it a little bit. But I think that there's going to be a lot of interesting brands that pop up on this trend. I know Patagonia is doing it right now. They've said that 95% of their clothing is PSA-free. Are PFAS-free. I know that IKEA has been on this since 2009 and they try to say that their furniture doesn't have it. And a lot of people are committed to not having it by 2025. But very interesting movement, I think.

All right, I got another trend for you. So this is a cool story and I would say this is an example of niches and riches, which is a phrase we've said many times. And if there's anything more niche than this, I'd love to hear it. So here's the story. There's a guy named Josh and Josh Dunning. He, his wife is a high school teacher and when he's talking to her and he goes, maybe he picks her up from school, he notices kids are doing something outrageous in schools, which is that they're coming into schools and they're just blasting each other with water guns. And he's like, what is going on? She's like, oh my God, I know these kids, they're obsessed with this game. I said, what's the game? The game, I don't know if you ever played this when you were in school, but it's the game Assassins. Um, and the game Assassins, the way it works really simply is you can play this one-on-one or like free-for-all or teams or whatever. But basically one person is the target and other people have to find them and you have to basically get the target first. So you want to shoot, you want to shoot the target with the water gun first. And then after you've got them, you get points because you were the assassin who got them. And then the target moves.

And so, first of all, that sounds awesome. I wish I could have played that game. That sounds great.

I'll debate the game right now. I can't even believe this is allowed, right? Water guns. You imagine the mess? This is ridiculous. But somehow, you know, rather than being annoyed, he sees opportunity. And so he goes, how are they playing this game? Like, how do you know who's it? And they're like, oh, we have this sheet and this paper, and then we have to like keep track of this. Keep track of the points. He's like, huh? So he goes home and he builds an app and he builds an app called Splashin'. And the Splashin' app is just a way to like run your Assassin's game. And so he messages, I don't know how Ben found this guy, but he's messaging Ben and he starts explaining. He's like, yeah, I built this app and I built, I just turned the game into something that would just like keep track of this, like replace pen and paper for this. He's like, it's good because it keeps track of the points and it tells you who's it and all this stuff. But it's like a very simple app and super, super niche. So you would not think this is how somebody gets wealthy. So he starts texting Ben his revenue numbers and he's like, um, you know, week 1, pretty small week 2. And he's like, week 3 is like $40K.

What?

It's called Splashin'.

But who cares?

But who the hell cares? Yeah, it's a summer fling and it's a great summer fling.

Dude, you were kind of glossed over the fact that this guy just messaged Ben and he just, Ben's just like, what are your sales? Tell me your revenue. And he tells him every week.

Dude, that happens to Ben like 10 times a day.

It's like in Parks and Rec where they find out that one of the main characters is a nurse and they start sending her dick pics to like diagnose so they could get diagnosed with an STD. And she's just like, dude, my, my, inbox is just full of like men's penises asking if they have herpes. I guess that's just Ben's inbox. It's just all these guys sending—

because he's useful, dude. Like, you— people tell him what's going on and then he's like, oh, you should talk to this person, they will solve that one problem you're having. And then they're like, wow, love this guy. And then he does it again. And like, you know, because I'll be like, hey, uh, like two people that don't know each other that we know are talking. I'm like, oh wow, how'd they meet? He's like, oh yeah, I introduced them. I'm like, how did you even think to introduce him? He's like, well, he's every week, he tells me like how it's going. And then he said he was having this problem. And so I told him about this other guy who solves that specific niche problem. And now it's like, you know, working out great. And I was like, oh, you're like a router. He's like a, like a, like a switchboard operator who's able to just like, once he knows what you need and he knows what somebody else has to offer, he makes connections and he asks for nothing in return. And that like, you know, just works out.

Have you seen Boardwalk Empire? The show?

No.

So the main character, amongst other things, he's basically a mafia guy. He's in the mob and he connects like Al Capone with this one distiller who can make Al Capone's whiskey or whatever. And whenever he does that, he goes, all right, where's my cut? And he, that's how he makes a living and gets rich off that by just making connections. Or he'll introduce Al Capone to a politician who's going to help hide his whatever. That's what Ben needs to do. Ben needs, we need to start, we need to change because in Silicon Valley, people make these introductions and they don't ask for anything. Ben should ask for something. He should get, he goes, where's my points? He just needs to start asking for points.

How old is this guy, Josh Dunning? I just looked him up. He looks like a young, a real young guy. I mean, that's pretty impressive. These basically kids like coming up with these things that are making very, very meaningful traction as one or two people operations.

Well, it's also the magic of software, right? Like software. Is so different than a services agency or an e-commerce play. We have a physical product, right? Like these software things, they build it once, it runs forever. Um, you know, they can have 3 million— this UMax guy, 3.5 million customers can use his thing. This guy's signing up 5,000 people a day because software scales. Software is magic.

That's not the magical part. The magical part I think is the psychology behind it. And I think, you know, we have a friend Nikita who frankly, I don't know what's the reality versus the story, but like there's all these people who he claims are coming to him for advice on how to make my app viral. And he like says, like he doesn't say it, but the story that I kind of glean from it is like, beep bop boop, you just do this, this, this, you change this thing to this thing, that's gonna change this metric to this thing and boop, done. Like, where's my money? And I don't know if that's the reality, but he's like, hey look, 3 of the apps that I advise are now in the top 100 of most downloaded apps in the Apple Store. And it just like is amazing how there's a little bit of a pattern and I don't entirely understand the patterns 'cause I'm not—

you're just describing expertise, right?

Yeah. But it just seems like more than ever before, it's becoming like a playbook and it just, it is ridiculous how like, I do think that you could take some of these, the, these, this knowledge and apply it to 5 or 10 other things and it works almost as well.

That's so badass.

You know, coming back. And he's like, I didn't do it in a manipulative way. I just thought that that was a better ask. And I was like, wow, that's a great, great story.

That's awesome. That is a really good story.

I want to get him on. I think he's got some, he's got some good growth stories and growth advice. So I'm going to try to get him on. I'll ask for his permission.

I think today was a 10 out of 10. I feel hyped. I want to like go and learn about some of this stuff. I want to look up Splashin'. I want to play Splashin'. First I need like friends that are immature enough to play a water gun game with me.

Adults. We need adult splashing throughout Austin.

I guess I gotta go buy a water gun, but, uh, in Texas you guys just play with real guns. Yeah. We're gonna call it bleeding instead of splashing. Um, that's great. Is that the pod?

Great plug.

Great plug. The thrill of the show. I guarantee you that nobody does ad reads like I do ad reads, right? I'm gonna teach you something, tell you a story, and then I'm gonna give you the value too.

That's a great thrill. Now give me the shill.

Now the shill part is these guys were inside of Morning Brew, which is probably, would you say it's probably the most successful newsletter business outside of Agora, right? Like the most successful mainstream newsletter business.

Nearly $100 million a year business.

$100 million business grew really fast. Uh, you know, and both of us have tried building newsletter businesses and these guys built like grew it faster than both of, both of us. We, we were successful. They were even more successful. They grew their newsletter about 5 million subscribers and, and the secret sauce of how they grew their newsletter, their growth engine was this internal tool that they built, which let them write a, write a newsletter easily, like format it, get it all ready to go, baked in the growth stuff. So like referrals and, you know, like recommendation things at the bottom of an email when it's like, hey, send this to a friend and you can get a free sticker or free mug or free t-shirt or whatever. That all of those little tools that they built internally, this guy Tyler basically spun out and created Beehive to do that independently. So now anybody like me, when I built the Milk Road, I didn't have to build any of that shit. Milk Road, Morning Brew has like, I don't know how many hundreds of employees. We didn't need any of that shit. Literally, it was me, Ben, and one other guy. And like the 3 of us built a newsletter that we sold for millions of dollars because we could just use Beehive off the shelf. And so If you're looking to build a newsletter either personally or you wanna start a newsletter business like me and Sam did, Beehive is the way to go. They basically took all the secret sauce that was inside Morning Brew, turned it into a product that you can use off the shelf on day one.

10 outta 10. I was thrilled. I just imagine Joe Lonsdale just holding up his finger to your lips and saying, shh, shh, just shut up. Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up. Beehive.

It's hilarious too because I'm trying to connect with Joe. He's like this billionaire who's created like, you know, spy technology for the government, $50 billion company, you know, tools that all the asset wealth managers use, Adapar, a $3 billion company, OpenGov, which sold to governments and basically sold for $1.8 billion. He's got a like weapons company that builds like EMP pulses that will, you know, knock drones out of the sky, war tools. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, me too, man. I'm an entrepreneur too, just like you, me and you, same, same. Yeah, I built the newsletter company. Yeah, I did it like kind of part-time for a year and then sold it. Not for a billion dollars, just like a few million. It was great though. Yeah. And then what else do we got? I got a podcast. Talk to my buddy Sam a couple times a week. That's pretty dope. I'm working hard out here, man.

All while you're wearing camouflage sweatpants.

You and I are the same. This is while we were at a cold plunge together and I was just like also hyperventilating and being like, how long do guys like this stay in the cold plunge? I think it's longer than I'm used to, but I cannot. I cannot get out of this plunge until he does. I die an icicle or I live, you know, with all the glory of this.

And you're like, oh, you did a multi, multiple billion dollar companies. I got a 69 on U-Haul. So what'd you get?

So are you into lip maxing? No? Oh, I didn't think so. I just was curious if that was a priority for you.

That's a, that's a typical 49%er answer, bro. So check it out. Uh, Beehive, that's with two I's, by the way. B-E-E-H-I-I-V. They're H-I— oh yeah, that's weird.

That's a weird— they, they give up— they post their revenue. I don't know what—

let me— dude, Tyler, the CEO, for the next time we give this shout out, we'll focus on Tyler. Tyler's a great CEO. I thought he was a loose cannon, and I think he sort of is.

No, he's just good looking. That's what you thought. You were like, yeah, nobody this good looking and cool is going to be a good operator. He actually is.

He's just He, I thought he was just too luciferian and then I realized that his aggressiveness is actually awesome. And I did not invest in them and it's one of the things that I'm like, oh, I should have done that. It's, it is.

But I was wrong. Next time we talk about him, we have like 4 or 5 more stories about Tyler. Tyler's an interesting guy and I, I respect the hell out of him. He's a good entrepreneur.

I want to see what their revenue is at right now. So they, uh, he tweeted over there like 12 million in it. Look at this graph. We got to put this up here. 7 million in ARR was February 1st. So 2 months ago, and this graph is literally like shaped like this. Uh, it's pretty crazy. And he goes, this doesn't include some of some revenue from the ad network. Oh no. March 19th, quickly approaching 10 million ARR. So they're probably just under 10 million ARR now.

Yeah, they're, it's an amazing company. They've taken off. Um, is it just beehive.com or is it like a beehive.com slash?

No, it's just beehive.com. Go there if you want to start a newsletter.

All right. Is that the pod?

That's the pod.

All right. 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.