3 Startup Ideas: Mouse Jigglers, Employee Monitoring Softwares and Photoshop Copycats
All right. So here's the deal. I have an update on a story that we talked about about 2 years ago. Partially, I want to like tell you something cool. Partially, I just want to nerd out with you on this topic because I'm shocked by it.
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.
So the pandemic hits in what, 2021? We all go remote and you and I start talking about something that was fascinating. So basically there's this weird Venn diagram of MFM listeners. There's this shithead and then there's this ambitious person and they overlap to create these ambitious shitheads. And what do ambitious shitheads do during the pandemic when we all go remote? They do this thing called overemployed. Have you heard of overemployment?
I think is overemployed when you basically one guy has 3 jobs, but the 3 jobs don't know each other.
Yeah. It's like a culture. It's like this tactic. It's the strategy. I don't know what you call it, but it's very weird and it explodes. And basically a small group of people, they go and get multiple jobs because they're like, dude, I'm working at Airbnb. I'm only working 20 hours a week. I get paid $150,000. I definitely can also try and get a job at Facebook.
Right. Working remote was the key unlock, right?
It was the key unlock where they could kind of hide. And this story we talked about, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times has talked about, it's kind of been popular, but I have an update on this story and it's very fascinating to me. So last week, Wells Fargo made an announcement where a couple dozen of their employees, specifically ones who worked in the wealth management unit, they laid them all off and they laid them off because they found that they were using these devices that you put your mouse on top of, and it's almost like a treadmill and it makes it seem like the mouse is constantly moving on their computer. And they also did it with keypads where they had this device above their keyboard where it was typing stuff. And the reason they did that is because what has happened recently since the pandemic is there's been software that has absolutely exploded where it monitors employees' work. Now, this has already existed in remote-first companies, but now many people are remote and this type of software has exploded to the point where something like 50% of all employers who have remote workers use some type of spy software. That's not the right word, but you know what I mean?
Like some type of like productivity detection monitoring.
Yeah. Spy software is more realistic, but that's. But that's like interesting. But all right. And so back to that Venn diagram of shitheads and ambitious people. Here's what they're doing. They're using these things. I'm going to tell you all about them, where they're exactly what the Wells Fargo folks were using, where they're like a treadmill for your mouse. So they're called mouse jigglers and they're— it's crazy. Now there's a company called Hubstaff and Terramine, I think it's called. There's two of them. They have something like 5,000 companies amongst them and they are employee tracking software. And they did this survey where they looked at a million of their customers or a million users using their spying tracking software. And they found that roughly 7% of the million people who are using this software were using these mouse jigglers or something like it. And then the, one of the CEOs of the companies, they go, The true number is actually probably almost certainly higher because they found out that they like were kind of being really conservative about this. And I was shocked. This market is so much bigger than I ever thought. And I want to tell you about a few people who are winning in this market. The first one on Amazon, go to Tech 8. So the word tech and then the number 8 USA.
So Tech 8 USA. This is another Mouse Jiggler, by the way, Mouse Jiggler. Is my new go-to diss for somebody who works at a computer all day. Oh, he's just a mouse jiggler.
It's the best. So there's this company called Tech 8 USA. They're based in Austin, Texas. And what they do is you can buy these things for like $30 or $40 and you can like add like a cool design to it. Like what they're doing is they're basically— they're, they're selling these like kind of fraud to like help helping you to commit fraud or do something a little bit strange. And you could add like a cool, like USA flag to it, or you can add—
best sales pitch ever. Look at this thing. The, in the product description, the last one, a thoughtful gift for loved ones. Our undetectable mouse mover makes excellent gifts for anybody who spends a long time at their computer, whether it's a hardworking professional or a dedicated student who values convenience and efficiency. This mouse juggler is a practical and thoughtful present. Show your appreciation, help them stay productive and stress-free.
It's sort of like, it's sort of like when the vape makers, like when I was in high school, we would buy vape machines when weed was still illegal. Illegal. And like, they're like, yeah, it's for tobacco, but like they put like a, they somehow use like the equivalent of a wink in all of their like description.
Look at this like picture. It's like balance your work life. And it just shows someone's computer and the mouse jiggler's just ran— like the person's not sitting there. The mouse jiggler's just moving the thing. And it says, walk the dog, relax, water the flowers, have a party with friends while your mouse does the work for you.
It's insane. And so look at this one. They have a really proud made in Austin type of like vibe.
By the way, was there any doubt that the Laziness device would be made in America? Like, of course it's made here. Like we didn't think it was going to be made in China. This thing's going to be made here.
Well, and I looked up, like I was trying to figure out who's the founder and like, it's like a weird business where they don't talk about it. And I also think it's maybe weird to be making these devices, particularly if your company is remote. Like the CEO of this company is like, yeah, not a chance. We're not going to go remote. But it's really fascinating that this business is, I think, thriving. So Tech 8 USA, one of the winners in this category.
Dude, they stole your dating profile. Smart, beautiful, undetectable.
That was yours.
How dare they?
It's pretty funny that that's a thing. The second thing that's thriving, and this is, uh, the third thing is the most interesting, but I'm gonna tell you a quick one about Hubstaff. So Hubstaff is a software company that does the tracking. To see if you're using these devices. The guy started it in like 2019 as like a side project. And if you Google Hubstaff revenue—
by the way, not to be confused with today's sponsor, cue the ad. All right, we're back.
So Hubstaff, the guy, if you Google Hubstaff revenue, you'll see that he started, I think, in '19 or '20, pre-pandemic, and it was like a side project for him.
Oh, no way. $22 million in ARR.
Yeah. And when he started it, he's like, I just hit $10,000 in MRR. I just hit—, $50,000 in MRR. And then on IndieHackers, he's like, I just hit $200,000 in MRR. Pandemic hits, explodes to where now it's doing $22 million in recurring revenue. Who knows what that's worth, but for sure, 9 figures. And it started as a side project and he's completely exploded his business. Totally bootstrapped.
You know, it's exploding because he used to be building in public, like he had a Baremetrics page. And if you go to their public dashboard now, it's gone. It got too big, too big to be, to need to grow in public here. But this is super impressive. So this is $20 million plus ARR. He started this during the pandemic.
That is so smart. It's awesome, right?
And it looks like it's got, you know, 15,000+ paying customers. Wow. That's impressive. By the way, would you use something like this? Like, for Hampton, would you install something like this? Because I'm not going to lie, I'm more afraid of this than I am like my wife cheating on me. You know what I mean? Like, it would break my little heart to find out that somebody on my, one of my teams is just running 3 jobs and they got a mouse jiggler all day. And that would really make me sad. And it kind of makes me want to use something like this to find out if someone's cheating on me.
Yeah, I think I'm open to it. I like to think that our company is small enough that, and we like, I would, you would know, but yeah, like it's, it's a very questionable, like I have to ask myself, would I be open to this? And the answer is definitely maybe, like, I'm not like against it. The answer is yes, soon. Yeah. So it's interesting. Now let me tell you the third winner of this whole thing. So there was a subreddit called Overemployed and Overemployed at the time when we talked about it, I think they're at 20 or 30,000 members on subreddit on that subreddit. And it was basically, they had this whole vernacular of like my J1, my J2, my J3, meaning their job one, job, and they have all these like phrases and things like that. Well, the moderator of that subreddit launched a website called overemployed.com. And if you go to that website, he talks about his background and why he started it. He also refers you to like personal finance tools, which is like an affiliate play for him. And he talks about like, he reviews different mouse jigglers and things like that, which is like a clear affiliate play. However, he has a community. The community is partially free, partially paid. It costs $300 a year. I'm not sure how, what percentage of people paid $300. But it's a Discord community. He has 60,000 members on his Discord of people who are following the Overemployed, like, lifestyle. And I went and tried to track this guy down. His name's Isaac. And he, you don't know his last name, but his LinkedIn, he calls himself a career polygamist. And he has a whole blog all about overemployed.com and it gets—
So his, you just, it's just Isaac. Because he tells the story about how he had 3 different jobs and how he got pissed off and this, and it's like an us versus them, like founder story, but it's kind of weird, right? Because you're not breaking the law probably, but you're definitely doing something that you're probably slightly ashamed of, or at least as an employer, I would be unhappy with. And so it's this whole community, this subculture of people that's significantly larger than I ever imagined. And they're talking about these things openly and it's very fascinating.
I went to the website. Welcome to the secret door to financial freedom. Insane. I've always wanted the secret door and, uh, and he's tapped into my needs. This is crazy. Work 2 remote jobs, reach financial freedom. That's the, uh, the slogan for this website. This is crazy, dude. It's not crazy that this, like, I knew this was happening, but the Sampar special here was to go back and check back in on this thing that we talked about 2 years ago and go find this guy's blog and community and Hubstaff and the $22 million in ARR. It's crazy that there's a whole ecosystem, it's an ecosystem come, come up around this one lifestyle, right? Like you had The 4-Hour Workweek, which is about delegation, automation, and basically like 80/20 prioritization. And now you have Overemployed, which is like the messed up cousin to The 4-Hour Workweek, where he's like, look, just lie to your, lie to your company. You're going to work the same 8 hours, but for 3 different companies that I'm so, I'm surprised. I'm surprised. I'm not surprised at the same time at how popular this is.
And let me give you one more. And what I'm about to show you, it's kind of like the equivalent of teaching your children about safe sex, but really hoping that they don't do it. Like they don't have sex until whatever. Then they're like, sex sounds awesome. I'm going to go do it because there's this guy called— and I linked to it at the very bottom of this section. It's called theoveremployedguy.com. And he— I clicked the about page and he has this long history of like how he got J-1, J-2, J-3. And part of the story, he's got this quote. He's like, I had a bad job and I was upset, frustrated. I wanted more money. And then it wasn't until I heard the host of My First Million mention this new trend of people in tech working multiple jobs simultaneously that I was woken up to this badass community. And this is like the second largest site amongst the overemployed.
Look at this guy's logo, by the way. It's the dude with 3 laptops open. I think that's one of the cardinal rules of this is like you must use one machine per thing because they're going to be tracking you.
So you have to, uh, have different laptops and he's wearing a hoodie and a mask in where it's like, clearly we all kind of agree that this is a little bit strange that you're doing this. And so I wanted to bring this story up because I'm not shocked, but I'm still shocked.
Also, can I get your take on this? Because if somebody is listening to this, this is back to the safe sex thing. Somebody's listened to this. We, you know, we find it fascinating that this is going on, but me and you have zero desire. To do this. Zero. And maybe that's because, all right, we kind of already made it in a way. We sold our companies. We don't have any jobs. We don't need it. We don't need a job, period. But if you were young again, would you do this? Like if you were just working at one job and you saw this, would you be tempted to go down this path?
No, I mean, I would be tempted, like I'm tempted to do anything bad, like drugs, but like, like in the back of my head, I'm like, I, this is wrong. I know, I think it's wrong. I think that I would not be— this is career Molly. Yeah. Like, like maybe occasionally it's all right, but you, Oftentimes regret it. No, this goes against my ethical code. I am not, I'm not in favor of this. Are you? No, not at all.
Not just the ethical side, because the ethical side, I think it sounds okay, but I have like a relationship with the people I work with. You know what I mean? Like it's not a, it's not this nameless, faceless giant big corp that doesn't care about me. Like I've always worked in, you know, usually smaller environments where, you know, we're a team on a mission together. And if I was doing some other mission while we're on our mission, that would feel like a, like a pretty deep betrayal. But that's just, I always worked in that type of environment. The second thing though is I just don't think it's a good strategy.
I think it's a bad strategy.
If you are willing to be clever and, and hardworking enough to figure this out, like dog, just, just either start your own business or crush it at one job and you'll make more money and work less than you will having to do this like thing and have to juggle this in your subconscious at all times about these lies that you're living, right? Like living a lie is very taxing emotionally, but also you don't need to do this. Like one great job or one big effort, if it's your own company, will pay off. Like go, just go up the ladder in your own company or start your own company if you're willing to do all this shit. I just think it's bad strategy. It goes back to the thing I said the other day, like the dumbest person in the world is a professional blackjack player. If you're smart enough to be a professional blackjack player, player, but you're dumb enough to use it on a game that's rigged against you. Like, that's on you. You are the wrong middle of the Venn diagram of super smart and hardworking and picks terrible games. And I think this is an example of that. You are super smart and hardworking to figure this out, to set this up, but you're playing a dumb game. And what's the thing? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. That's to me. That's what this is to me. I don't want a J1, J2, J3. That's, that's a bad idea.
I remember in high school I had this buddy who basically took a water bottle, like an Evian or whatever water bottle, and they undid the logo. Like they took the plastic off of the bottle and then on the inside they wrote all the equations for the math test that they needed to memorize. And it was beautifully done. It was— the handwriting was perfect. The equations were even sometimes in code in case they got caught that you couldn't decipher it. And I was like, how long did that take? It's like, it took hours, but like, I made this perfect thing. And I remember thinking like, you could have just studied. Like, if you just studied, like you would've got, you probably, the outcome would be the same and it's, it's way less risk. That's sort of like what's going on here.
Exactly. Perfect analogy. Perfect story.
So that's my story on overemployed. I thought it was fascinating. Do we have a guy, by the way, today's sponsor who was overemployed a little bit where he had a side hobby? Was that a good transition?
That's a pretty good transition. All right. So speaking of Speaking of overemployed, speaking of doing multiple things. When I first heard about what the CEO was doing, I kind of groaned because I invested in this company and the company was doing well. And then the CEO launches a newsletter and I'm like, bro, why do you need a newsletter? Do you really need a newsletter? And it's excusable because today's sponsor is Beehive. They make the easiest platform to create newsletters. So on one hand, it made sense. He was using his own product. And that seemed cute, but I didn't really fully get it until I talked to him and I tried to understand why is he doing this. And so this is the story of, um, of Tyler Denk starting Big Desk Energy. So basically we've talked about this before. There's a great playlist on Spotify if you need work music called Big Desk Energy. And there's this guy Tyler Denk, founder of Beehive, and he just made a playlist of songs he listens to while he works. And I like music, but I have poor taste. So I used to use this thing all the time because I was like, great. I, I don't know how to find cool music. Like Tyler's kind of a cool guy. He's a cool looking guy. He's a young guy.
He's like a New York Manhattan hip kid.
Yeah. But he like, he lives in the, on the beach somewhere. Like he's, he's a cool dude. So I got to borrow his music. I was using his playlist, but then his playlist became a newsletter. Okay. Interesting. Why? And now it has, he was like, I want to do this because I want to dogfood my own product. I want to build in public. And I wanna just live and breathe of all the pain points of my customers so that I can be better at building product. When he said that, I realized, oh, this makes a lot of sense because too many times do the product builders get so busy, they get disconnected from the actual product usage. The analogy I'll give is every night my kids, I don't put them to bed. My wife puts our kids to bed now. We have like a new bedtime routine where she's able to do all 3 kids at once. And so. The two older kids, they want to eat fruit in bed every night. No matter what we fed them for dinner, they're like, can we have fruit? Okay. So I have to do this like 20-minute fruit cutting exercise. I'm cutting apples and grapes and strawberries. I put it in a bowl. I make it look nice. I go deliver it to the bed. They're so excited. They're watching their little bedtime stories or whatever, and they eat the fruit. And I've been doing this for like 3 weeks now. And then finally yesterday, my daughter was just like, hey, can mama cut the fruit? And I was like, what? I'm like, why? Dad always cuts the fruit. What do you mean? And she's like, well, you do it bad. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, well, you do it like the way you cut the strawberries. Like, I can't eat it like that. They're too big. And I was like, what do you mean? Why didn't you say anything? She's like, well, you're not there. You're downstairs cutting the fruit and then you hand it to me and like, by the time I try to eat it, you're not there for me to tell you. And so for 3 weeks I had this no feedback loop. I didn't know how she likes her strawberries cut. And for too many CEOs, that's, that's them with their product. They don't know how the customers like the strawberries cut. And one thing that Tyler did that was very, very smart for Beehive was launch his own newsletter, figure out how to grow it to 30,000, figure out how to monetize it, do all of the things that a user of his product would want to do. He did it as the CEO and he told me that has been huge for them on their product development because now he could just look at the roadmap and be like, that shit doesn't matter. These things do because he's actually lived it, breathed it. He knows how the users want their strawberries cut.
Well, and he built a lot of this at Morning Brew, which is They like took a lot of like what they learned there, but even then he was just the growth guy.
He wasn't the guy actually writing the thing, sending the thing, getting the feedback from customers. It's very different when you fully play it out. So the guy's cool. They've got taste.
This is awesome. Oh yeah, this is all built in Beehive. All right. This is pretty badass. All right. I'm on board. I just signed up.
So if you want to create a newsletter or you want to grow your newsletter, go to beehive.com, B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com. By the way, Derek Sivers, do you know him? He said something once that I really loved. He goes, I made this tool that was for hosting your own website. And they were like, why was that the biggest business opportunity? He goes, no, it was a magnet. He goes, I realized that anybody who has a cool personal website, anybody who cares enough to make a personal website, you're my people. He's like, so I just made a tool that was useful for them. It's not even that expensive. It's pretty cheap. I undercut the market price. It's not the best business in the world, but it was amazing because it brought all these people who I realized that's the highest like signal thing. If you have your own personal website, I probably fuck with you.
Like, I like you. My signal if I like you is if you have an income north of $2 million and also you listen to Kid Rock. If you do those two things, if you do those two things, you're me. You're probably interesting.
All right, what do you got? I wanted to read you something. So I think here's another little life hack for you. One of the great things about the internet is it is such a wide buffet of content. And I think a mistake most people make is that they go to the fast food chains of the internet. You go to your Facebooks, your Instagrams, your TikToks, and that's, you just make a diet, a content diet of only getting information from big fast food chain social networks. I'm a believer that your info diet matters. Do you agree with that? Is that something you think about or, or care about?
Yeah, I, I, my fear is getting influenced by the wrong people. And I know that you've talked about this info diet for a long time and it kind of influenced me.
Yeah. And I, I had this thing, I said, I'm, I'm, I'm going on the intentional internet, which is basically, I'm not going to just eat whatever the algo feeds me. When I log in or open up a tab, I'm going to think about like, what am I trying to get out of this session right now? And then I start opening up Kindle or I start opening up different things. It's the intentional internet. So I have this idea. I'm going to create this like food pyramid of like the info diet. So the way the food pyramid was like, you know, you have your carbohydrates, your proteins, your dairies, whatever. I think there's the same thing for the info diet, which is there's probably some plans you should have, some proportions you should have of different types of information if you want to really like feed your brain in a way that's going to make your brain healthier. One of the cool superfoods, I'll call it like kale, like these nutrient-dense superfoods is find a baller and then go find their early blog before they made it. I love doing that. And so I was doing this over the weekend and me and Ben, we were looking up and we looked up, uh, do you know who Brian Koppelman is?
Is he a famous VC?
No, there is a Josh Kopelman. I think Brian Kopelman is the guy who created Billions. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like a showrunner in Hollywood. Yeah. And so we were, we were talking about Brian Kopelman for this other thing. And then we went and we looked up like, does he publish anywhere? Does he post his thoughts anywhere? And we went and we looked up and you basically want to find things that are like, you know, 5+ years old. And it's his blog, it's his old interview, it's the that course he taught at NYU. You try to find something like that.
So you have to give a shout out to his blog, bryancoppelmann.com. It's just a plain white and black blog. This is an awesome find.
And they're very simple posts. They're not like either the mo— they're not the most mind-blowing things either, which is in itself kind of an interesting thing. It's like, wow, this guy who achieved so much, it's not like he's writing this Shakespearean genius stuff that I couldn't have thought of. It's like, wow, this is a guy kind of like me that made it in a really unique way. So anyways, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read you the one post. Write What Fascinates You. That's the title. So I'm gonna read it to you. He goes, this seems simple, right? Of course we should write about what fascinates us and what we obsess over. But so many people approach writing, and especially screenwriting, as if it can be gamed, figured out, or strategized. And if you're somebody who could do that, congratulations, rock on. Although I wouldn't waste that kind of strategic brainpower on show business. There's problems to be solved out there in the real world. If you're that type of person, go figure out how to arbitrage energy resources in a way that motivates buyers and sellers to create a more equitable market or something. I don't know, because I don't think of it that way, but obviously you do. For the rest of us, we need to calculate less. We need to look inside to find our subject matter, or outside at the world we see, but through a prism of enthusiasm. Prism of enthusiasm. He says, meaning we must find subjects that are personally animating, inspiring, and engaging to us. Because once we do, we have a shot at making them inspiring and engaging for others as well. Because when the story's important to you, when it fascinates you, when the passion is tangible, the reader senses it. And without even knowing why, it gives you the benefit of the doubt. You have a story to tell, of course, and it still takes an enormous amount of effort and concentration. But the huge collateral benefit of telling stories that genuinely fascinates you is this: forcing yourself to sit down and actually do the work is much easier than when you're writing something because you think it's marketable, because you think it could sell, or it's in a genre that's currently in demand. So calculate less, write your obsessions, and have a better chance of A, getting something really written. And B, turning your screenplay into something that excites and engages the reader.
This is awesome. And he did this in 2013, over 10 years ago.
Yes. And I think this same advice, by the way, works for businesses as well. There's one way of doing business, which is the calculated strategic approach. You look at markets, you create a market map, you try to identify a gap, and then you're gonna reverse engineer something, and then you're gonna try to do demand testing and A/B testing, and you're trying to validate your idea and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the other is you work on things that fascinate you. Either it's a new technology that you think is really cool, or it's a new lifestyle that's being promoted that you're curious about, you're fascinated by, and maybe there's not enough products for people who want that lifestyle. Or maybe it's a problem that you have that you kind of get obsessed over. You're like, wait a minute, am I crazy? Why am I the only one who's not okay with things, the status quo here? Like, that's where the greatest companies get built and the greatest successes is, and it's actually easier. It's easier because you're excited about it, and it's easier because you actually care about the problem. You're going to actually figure out the solution. And so I just thought that this was awesome advice for content. Look at today's podcast. Like, I'm telling you about a 13, you know, 11-year-old blog post, and you're telling me about a subreddit that's popping off, and this, these, these bloggers that are overemployed. Like, the reason this podcast works is because we talk about what fascinates us, and it's because of that. It's not something anybody could compete with because nobody else has the same weird taste palette that we have. But if they did their weird taste palette, they would find their audience.
And it's really hard to stay unique as you get bigger, whether whatever you're doing as it gets more successful, everyone wants you to tone it down. And it's incredibly challenging to not give into that. We have this right now.
You've seen it, me and Slack. I'm on a rampage because I'm like, dude, our titles and thumbnails that are on YouTube are too YouTube optimized. They're calculated. It's this is going to get somebody to click instead of this is how we want it to feel, or this is what would make me interested. It's like, no, no, what would make the mass populace interested? Well, it's like maybe we don't necessarily need the mass populace. Maybe we need the type of people that we want to attract because they're the ones that are going to actually like the podcast because they're the ones that actually will resonate with it and stick with it. And I think that we have made a mistake in part of our world, which is I don't think— I think we kept the content pretty pure and sacred to what we want. But I think the packaging we've sort of tried to sell out and calculate and try to like maximize clicks and views and trying to roll that back.
Yeah, I agree with that, by the way. And that's also why I like a lot of YouTubers because there's not a committee. Usually it's just one person where he's like, this is my show. I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to do. Right. Like there's this guy I follow named Whistlin Diesel. He's this guy. He's not a kid anymore, but he's this guy in Indiana and he does the stupidest, craziest stuff and he's hilarious, but he's a representation of like the most interesting YouTubers. Who don't really— they don't really sell out and they keep it real, and it makes them way more successful. Yeah, I love it. Let me give you an example of a person who fits this mold wonderfully. So you and I are fans of Peter Lovells. He fits this mold perfectly. I saw that he shared something recently and I went down this rabbit hole. So there's this guy— I'm going to struggle to say his name big time— I believe he's French. I don't know exactly. Clement Piccolapita. I can't say his name, dude. Look at his name.
Do you see it? Honestly, I was going to make fun of you, but that is not easy. Piccolapita. Piccolapita, I think his name is.
Piccolapita. So listen to what this guy did. So I looked at his website. His website is kind of hard to figure out. So he was a, or he is a DJ, like a DJ in clubs. But I guess while he was DJing and trying to pay the bills, Bills, he was also a software developer where he would like make random software. He just released something 2 or 3 days ago. That's amazing. So this is sick. Yes. So let me tell the story a little bit. So we talked about Photopea. So Photopea is a free, basically, um, I'll call it a clone of Photoshop, but I don't know if it's exactly a clone, but it definitely started that way. So Photopea is a free version of Photoshop created by this guy named Ivan. And Ivan was, he's one of these indie hacker guys where he was really open about it. So he built this. Photoshop clone, which is obviously Photoshop is huge and it took off right away. And I think in 2021 he posted that he made $1 million in revenue, 90% of that being ads. And then 2023 he said that he was now making close to $300,000 a month from this Photopea website. And it's huge.
It blew up. It has 15 million visitors a month.
Yeah. Massive, massive, massive, massive. And for all I know, it's just one person. Well, this other guy, we're going to call him Clement because I can't say his last name. What Photopea did to Photoshop, he did with Adobe After Effects. And he calls it PikiMove or PikiMove. What do you, how do you think you pronounce that?
I have no idea.
PikiMove. I don't know. PikiMove. So you'll have, it's P-I-K-I-M-O-V. And you have to go to this website. So basically this guy, he posted it on Hacker News and then he posted it on Reddit and Twitter and it blew up on all three of those places. And he said, basically he was like, I'm on this., Linux machine and I've been trying to like use the photo After Effects and it wasn't really working and it wasn't doing what I needed it to do. So for the last year, I basically just built this version of it for myself and it's free and now I'm letting the world use it. And he was very underwhelming with his announcement. He was like, so here's this thing, you guys can use this. On Twitter, it gets something like 2 million views. Hacker News, it's the number 1 post. Reddit, it's massive. It's completely blown up. And it is so awesome that one person built this thing. So you went to the website, what did you see?
It, I mean, it looks like After Effects and it just says free, free alternative to editors such as Adobe After Effects, web-based, nothing to install, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can do everything you can do on After Effects and, uh, your files stay on your computer. They're not uploaded to a server. When we talked about Photopea, I think we've talked about Photopea a few times. It was one of the earliest episodes of this podcast. You, you had showed me Photopea or I showed you Photopea. I don't remember what it was, but That was a, a kind of like a miracle looking product. These are like the, um, radioactive indie, indie hackers, like the indie hackers that got bit by the, the bug and now have superpowers where one man can recreate all of Photoshop, like every feature of Photoshop in a browser and it actually works and he is willing to give it away for free and just maintain it himself for the rest of his life. And now somebody's doing it with After Effects. This is super impressive.
It's incredibly impressive. And he tells the story where on Twitter, people are like, this is amazing. How on earth did you do this? And he is like, I just did it on nights and weekends by myself. And I figured it out.
Dude, this is sick, by the way. Look at this. So, so somebody in Hacker News, the comments, they go, as a motion designer, I'm curious what feature, what features does this have that After Effects doesn't? And then somebody came in and says, I'd say the main feature it lacks is that there's a subscription payment requirement. So good. It, it's awesome.
And it was, a total underwhelming launch in that he didn't like overhype it. He just said he put it out in the world, but it was one of those products that you go to it and you're like, it's sort of like seeing like a huge Lego setup where you're like, yes.
Yeah. What a great analogy.
The fact that you spent a year putting this together, I'm impressed. I don't have to know anything about this, but this is just epic just for being epic. Right.
Do you know what I mean? Instant, instant internet respect for, for this. This is so impressive. I'm never going to use this because I don't use After Effects anymore. Thank God. But this is awesome. This guy has my eternal respect and I'm glad we're sharing it here. I'm going to tweet this out also. This is so sick.
It's really awesome. And if you Google his name, you can't find photos of him. So most all of his photos, they're not even like avatars. They're just like silly. They're like, I think it's a shark or a whale or something. It's his avatar. Like you really can't find a lot of pictures about this guy. And if you go to his website, there's nothing there. He barely explains who he is. And so this is like a true one of one, these rare individuals that I particularly love, and I know you love too, where it's like these just almost, it's almost like a hacker, but they're not doing anything wrong. Do you know what I mean? It's like a weird subculture of people that I'm obsessed with where they're artists who know how to program is basically what they are. And you can't find anything about this guy. It's like he's doing it almost for art's sake.
How long did it take him to make this?
Do you know? He said early 2023. So that would be a year and a half.
A year. Very talented. That's cool.
It looks great. I don't know anything about After Effects because I don't use it either, but I go to the website and I'm like, this is special. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah.
Oh wow. Okay. All right. I'm impressed. This is great. Okay. What do you want me to do? I have two topics. You pick the Ryan Serhant Show or my self-driving car experience. Self-driving car for sure. Okay. So self-driving car. Uh, so I went into San Francisco last week for for a couple meetings and the new Waymo, Waymo app is now open for everybody. So I don't know, are you like fully in the loop on what's going on? Basically there's, there's actual self-driving cars that just drive around San Francisco like taxis and it's happening and it's not like limited or fake in some way. It's on a demo. You push a button, it shows up. It's got your name written on the top of it. You push unlock, it opens up. There's no driver in there. You get it and it takes you to your destination. It is magic. I think it's awesome. It works super well. I would have been pretty nervous to get inside this, but I had so many friends who've been using it because they were in the private beta that were like, dude, this thing is so good. It's so good. It's better than Tesla's Autopilot by far. This is, this is really, really good. So I got in, I feel like here's a couple of thoughts on this. I don't know exactly what I want to say, but I just wanted to come to you with a few, few random thoughts. You tell me, you help me make sense of this. So the first thought is just. I can't believe this is happening. Like, I can't believe in my lifetime this is just going to happen where we're just going to shift from like nobody drives cars. And it's so obvious the first time you get in one. Like, I had to take an Uber back and literally it was comical. It was like the worst Uber experience you could have. It was like 100 degrees in the car. He wouldn't open the windows and he wouldn't turn on the AC. And every time I asked him a question, he was like super grumpy. And I was like, I just never want to have a driver in the car again. I just, I went from the Waymo seamless, private, you know, uh, fully in your control autonomous experience to like back to what felt like a rickshaw in India. Like it felt terrible. And so I can't believe this is happening. I feel like this should be a much bigger deal and nobody's really talking about it. It's not that it is a secret, but I feel like nobody cares. That's very strange to me because the coolest AI thing that, that's going to happen is that the cars are going to drive themselves and then we're just going to sleep. Eat, play video games, and chill inside cars from now on. And nobody's gonna get in car accidents. That's gonna be amazing. And I feel like nobody's really excited that we're now like right here on the cusp. 'Cause if this can do this all throughout San Francisco, and San Francisco's kind of a complicated place, like it's a city street, there's people walking at jaywalking everywhere, there's construction. That's, that means it's gonna work in a lot of places. So I can't believe this is happening. I was surprised that it cost as much or more than an Uber, and I was totally fine with it. I thought that the whole point of this self-driving car was gonna be that it's gonna be cheaper, and I think eventually it will, but right now these cars are very expensive. But I was more than happy to pay a premium to go in the driverless experience, which was very surprising to me, uh, because I thought the reason I would want it was 'cause it's, it's less expensive. It's just better. Uh, I mean, I, I don't mind paying more.
How much more expensive was it?
Like 20, 30% more expensive? Oh. That's nothing. Yeah, not, not bad. Obviously there's a little bit, you know, there's some small hiccups, meaning it's like more polite. So for example, if you're standing right there, it won't just stop in the middle of the road, block everybody's traffic just to let you in. It'll like try to, it'll go up 30 feet and pull over and you got to walk 30 feet and you're like, ah, I can't believe I couldn't just stop all of the street traffic to get into my car. So there's like little things like that that are kind of annoying, but actually understandable. But man, I was impressed.
Have you been in one of these? No, but I'm looking forward to it because I have a Tesla and I hate my Tesla. I think a Tesla is a horrible car. I hate it. Which one do you have? The X. And I think it's horrible, but there's one feature about it that makes it absolutely worth it, which is the self-driving stuff, which you keep your hands on there. But I drive that car all the time and I only use the self-driving. I am significantly more comfortable with that than my wife or me driving the car. I think it, I think it is way safer. So from now on, all of the cars that I'm buying in the future are going to have some type of driver assist. And it's so much better.
Let me correct you. In the future, you're just not going to buy cars. You're just going to push a button and the car is going to take you where you want. You're never going to need to own a car.
Yeah, I could see that. So there's something like 40,000 deaths in America from car accidents. And I, I, I, there, People will still die because of this, but it's going to be drastically reduced. Additionally, if you've ever been in traffic, have you ever like studied what causes traffic? Sure haven't. Well, like, it's like a, like, like if you ever see like those weird GIFs or, uh, on like how stuff works, well, you'll be like, here's how like a traffic jam starts. And you see like one person abruptly stop, which causes another person to abruptly stop. And then like, it's like a train, train, chain reaction. And it's like a really weird, it's more of a psychological problem almost than anything where you're like, wait, why is this person stopping? Which caused this, which caused this. And it's really fascinating. But when you think about traffic, that can basically be not solved for, but incredibly improved upon because your margin of error, it's not a human making that mistake. You're like, no, I know I can drive within 10 feet of the driver in front of me because I know that I'm like, I'm not just going to hit the brake too late, whatever. That's going to be solved. We're going to save hours and hours and hours every month because of this type of stuff. And let alone the lack of death. So I'm like incredibly excited about it.
Yeah. And parking, you know, I think cars have only like a sub-10% utilization rate, meaning 90% of the time a car is just sitting idle doing nothing. And that's going to change because if a car can drive itself, it's going to go instead of sitting idle, it's going to go and earn money for you. It's going to go drop people off and earn cash. And it's not going to be stay parked. So when utilization rate goes up, you don't need as many cars total because now each car is being used more. So now you have way less cars being used way more, which means way less parking, which means way less buying cars. It's a, it's a big change that's coming, right? In addition to the lifestyle change of we got in a self-driving car and you were talking about like, you know, you have to keep your hands on the wheel for the Waymo thing. You're just sitting in the back. You're just chilling. The wheel is just turning itself. You don't even, you don't even look outside. We had a full meeting and we could talk about numbers and everything because there's no driver. We were sitting there and we just, it was a productive 20 minutes. It was great. And if I wanted to just sleep, I could have just fully slept. I could have done anything. That's amazing. Cause I don't know how much time the average person spends in a car, but like an average, probably not even right. It's probably like of the people who really have a commute, they're probably spending like 2, 3 hours a day in a car versus, you know, what will become, you know, either an incredibly productive or relaxing time to be going from one place to another.
I remember I would explain this to my parents or in-laws and they're like, well, aren't you afraid? That you're in this machine and it's controlling things. And I always say, well, no, because at least I'm sitting at the wheel so I could take over. So there's like, I'm part of the loop. But number 2, it's like, well, are you afraid when you get into an elevator? Right? Like, I'm not, I'm not afraid when I get in an elevator. I trust that that button is going to do the right thing and it's going to bring me where I want to go and it's not just going to drop me. I'm also not afraid when I fly on an airplane, you know, the pilot is sitting there at the seat, but it's like an autopilot plane. So no, I'm not afraid. Now I am a little bit nervous because the technology is new, but like in 10 years when, or a lot of times people are like, this is never going to be a thing. It's like, no, it's definitely going to be a thing in 10 years. It's going to be significantly better than it is now. And it's pretty good now. So yeah, I'm not afraid of it at all. And I'm incredibly bullish from now on. All the cars that I buy on a daily basis are all going to be the, have some type of driver assist. Like you use it on your Tesla and you're like, this is the way the world should be. At least that's how I think. What about this? Which one do you want to do? You want to do one more? Let's do the Ryan Serhant show.
So I binge watched the new, it's called Owning Manhattan. It's just like a random Netflix show. It's nothing like super special. No, most people wouldn't care about it. I liked it. It wasn't like the best show ever, but I happened to binge watch it. I stayed up till like 4 in the morning, watched it.
So who's this guy? I just know he's a silver hair guy that sells real estate.
Yeah, he's a real estate broker and he was one of the like kind of high-end brokers in New York. He got famous because he was on a show called Million Dollar Listing since I think he was like 25 years old. So he spent basically a decade on TV, but it was like Bravo TV and it was him and a bunch of other brokers. And what happened is he leaves the show in like the 10th season and he takes a little break and then he comes back with his own Netflix show. And obviously it was kind of like Selling Sunset was this huge hit reality show and the genre of like real estate reality became like a thing. They're selling OC, they're selling Miami, they're selling Sunset. There's like a whole bunch of these like real estate shows. So he comes back and he's got one called Owning Manhattan. And it's basically the story is Ryan Serhant, who's like the, uh, Ryan Seacrest of the real estate world. He's like this super good, you know, super good looking guy who loves to be on TV. He's just made for TV, who's got great skin and sells real estate. That's the guy. And so he takes this show and he's, um, the quest is basically he leaves, he, he left his brokerage, he starts his own brokerage firm. So, you know, you have Sotheby's and you have Compass and he's trying to create Serhant, like his own brokerage. And he hires up like 200 or 300 agents now. And the show is following him trying to go, trying to become the number one brokerage firm in New York. And I think they only serve like the New York area. They're not even, they're not nationwide, but he's trying to become number one in New York, which is the number one real estate market in the world. And I gotta say, the show is pretty interesting and it's interesting for a couple reasons. Number one, uh, you know, he's, he's good at TV, meaning he's kind of obnoxious, but it grows on you. He's like obnoxious, but then it starts to get better. Uh, but also all the agents, you know, it's a perfect cocktail. It's like you have house porn, luxury, like luxury real estate, you have big dollars flying around, deals that are closing or not closing. Then you have the agents who are like, you know, peacocking. They each have tried to have their own brand and personality and try to be the best in their own way. And then you have like the drama of like a soap opera or like a, you know, reality. Why is he obnoxious? Like, it's almost like his style, like his style is, you know, he tries to do cocky funny basically. I don't know, I do a bad impression of it, but it'll be like, it's like real estate is hard. Not for me. I mean, I make it look easy, but for other people it's hard. And he like, every interview he's doing that. And so at first you're just like, all right, whatever. But over time, you know, you do get to, you get to see the guy sweat because the guy's, you know, the way the show makes it feel is that he's hanging on by a thread. Each, each of these deals has to go through, otherwise bad things happen, which is, you know, just normal TV drama.
He gives off the vibe that he's like super alpha where it's almost like you have a stereotype in your head of, uh, like a, like a high roller hedge fund guy. But for real estate. Yeah.
And also kind of metro also. So he's not like just macho. He's, he's like, he's like kind of got like both sides of it where he's like kind of like got the style and the fashion and the like the, the light touch. But then he's also like a cutthroat killer trying to win.
He's like a wake up at 5 AM workout, eat healthy at the office by 7. You know what I mean? He's like that type of guy where it's just like he, he's intense.
Exactly. And so I wanted to read you what, so why did I want to share this? Really, there's two things I wanted to share. First is Hey, it's a TV show I liked. If you're looking for a TV show, you might like this one. That's the little thing. But the bigger thing would be, um, there's a moment in the episode, so, or in the show. So he, uh, I'll just give away a little bit of the show. So there's one young agent who's basically the kind of like controversial guy on the scene. He's talented, but he's an asshole, right? Okay. That's a great character. So this guy who's like fully tatted up, he used to be like a model in Norway or something like that. And so super good looking, super tatted up guy. Who's super cocky and arrogant. He's only 25 years old, but he's, he's like, well, why would he's like, oh, if you're young, if you made it on YouTube or you're a rapper or whatever, he's like, you don't want to buy from this. Like, and he's like talking about his coworker. He's like some like bald-headed used car salesman looking guy in a, in a cheap suit. You want to buy from me? He's like, I'm just the next generation. Like people want to, the next generation of rich people want to buy with me. And so he's, uh, he's like very cocky and whatever. And Ryan believes in this guy because he's clearly talented, but he's also like, dude, why are you such like a jerk around the office? Like, you're making my life hard by being a jerk.
He rides a motorcycle everywhere. And he's, by the way, guy's fantastically dressed at all times. Like, I tried to find this guy's like stylist. Like, who is this guy's stylist?
Because this guy's got great style, dude. He has neck tattoos. I'm not buying real estate from a neck tattoo guy, but you kind of want to.
Like, it's kind of like when the bad boy likes you. Yeah. All of us were like, me? Oh yeah, he's giving me attention. There's a certain part of you that wants that, dude.
If you have a tattoo that goes over your Adam's apple, I don't know. I like, I don't, I don't know if that's the line. Yeah. Like I'd want to hang out with you maybe, but I don't know if I want to do business with you.
I mean, you, you clearly have visible in a turtleneck.
We've got problems. All right.
And what about this guy? So there's a scene at the end. I just thought there was a great quote. So, uh, Ryan is kind of confronting this guy because he's been, you know, causing a bunch of Drama. And he says something I thought was just really great. He goes, you spend so much of your time trying to get noticed instead of spending your time trying to be great. If you spent half the time just trying to be great, you'd be so great that everybody would have to notice you. And I just thought that was just a wonderful line, a wonderful quote that I feel like I could have forwarded that in an insulting way to like 10 people I know in life. People who are very active on social media. And it's like, instead of trying so hard to get noticed, just try to be great. If you spent half the time just, just trying to be great, you would be so great that everybody would have to notice you. Like that guy who did the After Effects thing, he could have tried to be, you know, promoting himself and blogging and doing all this stuff. And instead he just did one great thing and we all have to notice him. We all have to follow him. We want to be a part of this guy's world versus him trying to push his agenda out there. And I just thought that was a great quote that a lot of people need to hear.
I am going to read between the lines here. Are you becoming introspective lately? Is this like a thing? Are you, you're, you're, are you trying to work through like what type of man you want to be? Uh, because I kind of, I kind of like it to be honest.
I'm doing the work as they say.
You know, uh, someone made a comment to me where they said like, you know, Sam, I could tell what phase of life you are in, uh, because I listened to the podcast and I hear what you're talking about and who you're getting influenced by. They were like, before you were having children, before you even said that you were going to have a kid, like, I kind of guessed it based off of what you were talking about. I'm kind of doing the same with you where it's actually exciting to see like the quotes, or in this case, the quote that you're interested in, you're like thinking like, that's how I should live my life a little bit more. Do you know what I mean? Of course. Of course. And I think that that's cool.
If you spot it, you got it, is the rule, right? And it's like, I think this is insightful because I have the problem that this insight cures, right? It resonates with me because there's a part of this that is true for me and true for people I know that I care about, you know, that I want to, you know, I wish I could shake them to hear it too. And so, yeah, I'm very into this.
You also, if you read the comments of our YouTube, you also have a large fan base of young men who look up to you and think that you're cool, which you are cool. Uh, they would be shocked at how basic bitch your TV choices are because you, you are, you so true. Sean and my wife will like text about like The Challenge or like, I know you're a Bachelor guy or whatever the— I don't even know what these shows are. But you— I love that this is the one part of you where you are a mainstream type of person and you're into this stuff.
I just try to keep in touch with the common folk, you know?
Yeah, I don't know if this is common folk, but I love how simple some of your tastes are. Look, you're a very complex person with deep taste in and a rich personality, but this is the one part where you're just like the rest of us.
Everybody's like that, right? You like to go build Legos in your free time. Like when we are, when the light, when we want to switch the light off, we don't want it just dim. We want it off. It's like when I want to relax, I want to go mindless. I want to veg. I want to just, I want to go completely and indulge in a non-intellectual pursuit because I already do it. And even then you could see like, I somehow turned that into like podcast content and lessons for life when I'm supposed to just be looking at people's pretty outfits and stuff. And, you know, I can't really fully turn it off, but I try to, I try to go and just do the stuff that I truly enjoy without trying to make it also be cool and intelligent.
This guy Ryan, by the way, he gives off— so I've seen him talk before and I found him, I found him very off-putting at first where I'm like, I feel like you're like Grant Cardone or something. You're going to like sell me something or you're trying to scam me. And then I got to know him and I'm like, oh no, you're— I think you're the real deal. You're just intense and you're legit. He has a company called Sell It. So sellit.com. Have you seen sellit.com? No. So basically it's like a course in one-on-one training business that you give to your real estate agents. And that could go one of two ways. It could come off like scammy and kind of bottom feeder type of stuff. When I go to the website, I do not get that vibe at all. I get like, it's like, it's legit. So he owns, I believe his real estate brokerage firm is incredibly successful. But this company, I've heard rumors that this business is doing something like $30 or $40 million a year in revenue. And he's building up like a legit media empire of courses. Yeah.
I buried the lead of why I wanted to talk about the show. The reason I want to talk about the show, I watched it and I go, oh my God, he's doing the Kardashian model. Yeah. But instead of selling like $9 lip gloss, He's selling $9 million apartments. This is genius. And what I mean by that is he is using the Netflix show as the greatest marketing vehicle for his own agency. So it's like he, he has hit media that creates, you know, more business and it is perfect content market fit. And I just thought, wow, this is incredible. This is just like the Kardashians have done where they use media to then build their, their beauty empire. He's doing this to build his real estate empire or his sales empire. And the, the, the funniest tweet I saw on this was somebody goes, the greatest sale that Grant Zarin ever did was selling Netflix an 8-hour infomercial without them realizing it. Because the show is an infomercial for him, for his brokerage, for his agents. And it is going to be, it's tremendous, right? It's the way that HubSpot treats this podcast. It's negative CAC. This show entertains you and it's profitable for them. So it's good media and good business. And once I saw this, I was like, wow, applying that to one of the highest ticket items in the world, a home, luxury homes at that, that is a very, very powerful combination. And you're just going to keep seeing examples of this content market fit happening where people can figure out a way to make really juicy standalone entertainment on its own. That is going to then inherently market you and your business.
This is an incredible job of that. And you and I, you're really close to this person. He bought his apartment, I think, from him, from Ryan. Yeah. Yeah.
We have a couple of friends that have bought from him.
Yeah. And I asked my buddy or our buddies about the experience and they're like, yeah, he showed up and he was there like showing me around this $8 million apartment. And he was real. Like it was, he was like actually doing the work. And so I think this guy's a workhorse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the New York, New York energy, right?
The New York hardcore overdrive, overwork personality. Yeah, no, I'm a big fan of this guy. He definitely was one of the types of people who I learned about him and I'm like, I'm not, I don't like you at all. And then I start learning more and more. I'm like, oh, you're awesome. You're legit. Yeah.
You come to respect the hustle.
I respect this guy a lot. I think he's the man. I think that, um, kind of like having, um, I've said this before, but it's kind of like having an Adam's apple tattoo. Not for me, but I still respect it. That's kind of like what this guy is, where I'm like, I can't imagine grinding that hard because he gets after it, but I love that he exists and he does this. So yeah, I actually do like this guy a lot.
All right. Right on. I think that's it.
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.