3 Killer Businesses Hidden in Plain Sight

What inspired this? Did you just see something?

Found one, found a second, found a third, drew a line. Three dots make a line. So that's kind of what happened here. So first is I'm on Twitter and I see Joe Gebbia, who's the founder of Airbnb, friend of the podcast. I see Joe tweet out something about a screenshot of an app that was checking water, um, water quality. Uh, so the cleanliness of water, it was this app called Oasis. I thought that sounds familiar. Sam mentioned that, like, I don't know, 6 months ago, Sam mentioned that in passing, but I never really paid much attention to it. What is the story of this thing? Oasis. So here's one that's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling a product that is free and it's hidden in plain sight and it's just water quality testing. So there's a kid who is behind this and we, we, we chatted with him. So Oasis is an app. It's an app that checks the water quality. It'll tell you if your city's water is clean, if your county's water is clean, it'll tell you You can hold up a bottle of this Aquapana right here and it will tell you, is this Aquapana actually clean or does it contain, you know, PFAS, forever chemicals, that whole deal, right? What's, what's in the water?

And a website, right? An app and a website.

And the way that you make revenue is I think he has an affiliate scheme where like if you buy something that he recommends, you, he gets a cut and also you pay $50, right?

And by the way, when I shared this, I knew it was a paywall and people were like, who the hell would pay for this? And I was like in that camp at first. And then I started clicking around the website and I'm like, Oh my God, my town's here, right? And it says it might be dirty, but I can't see the results unless I give them $50. And so like, I understand why it's actually incredibly valuable.

I think it can be—

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I promised you I would tell you about a company that's hidden in plain sight that is using free— selling free information and making hundreds of thousands. Check. Now I want to tell you about one that's making millions, and then we'll go to the hundreds of millions. Okay, so the millions one, and we've mentioned this once before, but it was years ago, so I want to bring it up again. If you've ever been to a company's office and you walk into their break room or their, maybe their kitchen where they have snacks, you'll always notice on the wall that there is this poster and our eyes just glaze over it. We don't ever look at it. Looks just like a, looks like, you know, when you're on an airplane and you see the safety thing in the the seat back in front of you. It looks like that, but it's on the wall. And this is a labor law poster. And the reason that your office had it is the reason that all offices have it. It's required by law that you have to post this in your company, your employee, you know, break room or open area. And these labor law posters, they update every year. So you have to get a new one every year and they're required by law.

So that's the, that's the good news. The bad news is you have to buy them. Or do you? And so here's the interesting thing about this business. There's a couple of companies that do this. I don't have all their names and information here, but I remember finding one that was like based in Minnesota. And what the guy was doing was he's just print— all he does is print labor law posters. So what they'll do is they'll mail you a letter to your business and the letter looks a little bit scary and it says, hey, if you don't have this poster up, you are in violation of California labor laws right now. And you must have this up. It is a, is a requirement by law. It costs $45. Tick this box, send this back to us. We will send you your poster. And you do that and you send it. They send you the poster, you put it up on your wall, you forget about it, you move on.

And this is a private company that sends that letter?

Correct. Now the thing is, these labor law posters are actually free. You could just go to your state labor law website. You can get the labor law posters, but companies have realized that using this sort of like awareness tactic, making it easy, sort of scaring the hell out of you, is a way to make a couple million dollars a year on super high margins because all you do is printing the same poster, single SKU, single product, one product a year, and you just send it out to businesses and they, and then they have to pay for it.

In all fairness, I'm on, I'm on the government's website and figuring out how to order the poster for free is actually hard.

Of course, of course. Just like filing your taxes is a little bit confusing and TurboTax and others have made a, you know, they, they turned the button into bright shiny green buttons instead of small gray buttons that you don't know which one to click, right? So there is a tremendous amount of value in simply either aggregating and structuring data and making it available for people, or helping you just comply without, you know, having to figure out how to comply. And, uh, you know, maybe the $50 tax is worth it every year as your subscription, but That's what these companies do. So labor law posters, a way to make millions of dollars selling a product that's free and a business, again, that's hidden in plain sight. And I bring this up because one of the great things about this podcast that I hope we do for people is that you will go from a mindset where success seems rare and hard to grasp, and you're sort of thinking, what is it? I need a great idea, and great ideas are rare. They're hard to find. To a mindset of Everything I see in my life, every object in my view, it's not there by accident. That is, that sign is there for a reason. That cable is there for a reason. Somebody realized you needed that and they created that. Once you realize that, you realize, oh my God, business is everywhere. This is a business. This is a business. This is a business. And then you realize, wow, all I gotta do is figure out one of these. That seems easy, right? It's like in a jar full of Skittles, picking one, it doesn't seem that hard. And that's what, you know, I think, I hope to sort of achieve by bringing up these businesses. Because not only are they clever little business models, but it just points out that your eyes are just glazing over million-dollar opportunities everywhere you walk because they are literally everywhere. You will go into a parking lot, look at the ground, somebody painted those stripes. And when you go look at it, you go, you can go ask the owner of the real estate. You say, who paints the stripes for your parking lot? They'll say, oh, we use these guys. You go talk to them. You say, wow. You just paint straight lines in parking lots. That's what you do. Yep. How much money do you make? You know, is this a small business? Oh, you did $7 million last year revenue? No, profit. Oh my God. Right. And then you realize, oh my God, there's somebody who makes $7 million a year profit painting white lines on the road.

That is so funny. Oh my God. His name was Miles. What happened to that guy?

I, he's one of those guys, you know how like you have these friends and frankly you and I are those people maybe where they're like, do you hacky shit?

You have those friends. It's like, dude, do you remember how we met?

Yeah. Where it was like, you do this hacky shit and you're You're like, this is going to go one of two ways. Uh, like it's going to go the right way or the wrong way. Miles was the wrong way. So like, he like kind of disappeared. He probably got in trouble for a crypto scam. Um, what's the, uh, yeah, it was like, it was crazy. But it, and like, and on his about page, he was like, why did my, why did the person who delivered my Bible want to talk to me? And his thing said, yeah, they tend to do that. Mormons love to talk. Like it said, like, uh, like it just explained how like you're going to get hand delivered by these Mormon guys. Uh, what's the third one? Okay.

Third one. Um, here's a product that is used, I believe, 6 billion times a day. It is a product that Time Magazine said is in the 50 things that made the world economy work. Do you want to take a guess what this is? It's a hard one.

I get it. This is, this is pretty fun. Uh, do you have one or two more hints?

Like many great inventions, it was invented maybe 20 years before it actually got used. So somebody invented this thing, they're like, this is great. Cool. But how do we, what do we use it for? They couldn't find a use case. And finally they found a use case. Oh, I'll give you another example. Um, every time you buy a product, you use this product. I feel like I'm doing those annoying riddles where it's like, I'm, I'm awake at night, but not during the day. What am I?

Or like, you could sit on me, but not take me with you. Uh, all right.

I'll end the suspense.

The answer, by the way, is a chair. What is that?

It's a barcode.

So, oh, that's cool.

Do you know the story behind the barcode?

No.

All right. So let me give you a little history lesson. I know you like history. So barcode is invented by these two guys, Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver. And these guys are inspired by Morse code. They realized like, wow, Morse code is so simple. It's just basically it's dots and dashes. The dash, I think, is like a rest basically. And the dot is like, you know, the sound. And they're like, could we create another system that's like that? Maybe a visual system. So they created a system, actually looked like a circle at the time. So it was like a circle. And they're like, oh, look, with thin lines and thick lines, we can create like an, basically an infinite number of unique tags for something. And they're like, oh, this is great. They patent it, but there's not really a good use case for it. And then people try to use it for a couple things. You know, they realize, oh, you know what we could do? We could track, um, train containers. Well, you know, we're always wondering where those containers are. Where in the route that they are and if they ever get unloaded. So they put a barcode on the side of a train container and it worked great. Everyone's really excited. That's working great for a second. And then the problem is trains are outside, they get dirty. And as soon as any dirt gets on the thing, it ruins the barcode. So they're like, ah, this is a bad idea. Take it off, scrap it. And then they try it on some second thing. Doesn't really work either. And basically for like, I don't know, a couple decades or something, nobody's using barcodes. At the same time, in another part of the world, you get the invention of the laser, and the laser gets invented, and the laser's a really great way to scan something that becomes interesting, but they don't really know what they're scanning. Why? What are we scanning this for? Lasers have multiple uses, but that gets invented. And then in the third part of the world, three things come together. The third part of the world is grocery stores are having a really tough time because they are trying to stock inventory and they're sort of by hand keeping track of all the inventory they have. Think about this. A store, there's so many units, it's taking so many hours of labor. And then if any customer checks out, it's so slow because, okay, every item you have, I got to punch it into the register exactly what this is. I got to either remember the prices or I got to write this in. And then I have to keep stock of the inventory levels. It's a pain in the ass. So they create—

do you think that like when Walmart was invented, created, founded almost around this time, do you think that a barcode is one of the reasons like, would that have prevented companies from scaling? Is just the operational manpower?

It's like, oh my God, how do they convince all of the manufacturers to put this on their thing?

They just like rally around retailers, demand it. So the retailers are saying this is going to, they're, they're the ones with the hair on fire problem, right? They're spending all this money and time on labor. So they say, hey, if you want to be in our store, you got to start adding these things to your product. And, and so for a manufacturer, you're like, oh, if I want shelf space, which is The most important thing for me.

Oh, great.

I'll happily stick this, this on here. And so they're all working. And where do you, but the problem is, where do they get the code? And how do I make sure that your code is not the same as my code? Right? Like, what, what's going to prevent that? Well, we all got to go through some central thing that's going to, you know, give us the barcodes that are, I can use for my product to make sure nobody else can use it. It's like reserving namespace or a license plate. It's like, how do I get my, my exact license plate that nobody else is going to have? And there became what's known today as GS1. GS1 is the nonprofit that issues these barcodes and keeps track of who owns the barcode space. And to get barcode space, you gotta pay. But again, remember, every store has standardized on one thing. So if you want to be in a store or you want your goods in an Amazon warehouse, for example, you now need to use their system, which means they have infinite pricing leverage and they charge a shit ton for these barcodes.

And so, and is that GS1 who's charging?

Does he host happy hours?

Yeah, exactly.

Like, what do you do?

Um, and they, you know, they stash $30 million in overseas places like the Caribbean and Central America. And all of their expenses, pretty much half of their expenses.

Are they like lobbying against the QR code? Is there like a barcode QR code, like lobby where they're just fighting each other?

I think QR codes are just a type of barcode. Uh, they're just a 3D.

Got it.

Okay. Uh, or 2D, sorry. Um, so yeah, that isn't that crazy though, that this, this nonprofit now has half a billion dollars in assets. Just selling barcodes. And any retailer, anybody who's ever had to like get your products, you know, you, let's say you want to sell on Amazon, Amazon says you got to do this. It's a racket. You end up just having to pay whatever they demand in order to get your products on the shelves.

Do you know how like there's been a lot of cool movies lately? There's been a cool movie on the guy who created BlackBerry. I think there was one on the person who helped create Tetris. And then there was another one for the person who helped create the Pop-Tart. He's like, kind of cool like product creation stories. Go, uh, I wonder if, is there an interesting one here?

Somebody's just sitting there is like, what if podcasts were movies? And then they just turned like every episode of like Acquired or How I Built This into a documentary, dude.

Well, this guy Bernard Silver, like that, that this is actually a way more interesting story than, uh, I would've thought because this is something that changed culture. It changed, it changed so many things. Like it, You know, we talk about inflections and how like, you know, the iPhone was invented, which had all these ramifications, including a GPS being there, which now means that Uber has the ability to exist. And then there's like a million examples of that. This is one of those inflections where like this barcode helped create, let's say, or made a Walmart possible or made this other thing possible, which like literally shaped history. And this is actually really fascinating stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, so, so this is just a, it's a space that you, again, you don't think, you don't even think this is like a, you don't think, where does this come from? Where does this little thing come from? And again, it doesn't come from nowhere. Somebody creates it. And then that person who creates it now has, you know, something that they can charge for and there's business everywhere.

So it's so funny that this episode is accidentally turning into a theme, a theme of things that you don't really think about, but how they became a thing. I have actually an example of one of those. Can I tell you it?

Yeah, go.

And so they go, you got to read this though. A guide to casual business wear, ideas for dressing professionally at work. And then it basically shows like pants, jeans, like it's showing like options, ideas for it. And then is there a, uh, rules for it? So what are the rules that they said?

Yeah. It says don't wear like tattered jeans, but they should be nice new jeans. Right. Or like, like they can't be stained or what else does it say?

Uh, sleeveless, no sleeveless, no tanks. Oh man. I mean, discrimination, baby steps, baby steps.

We're going, we're going from suits to khakis. Like, you know, like it takes time.

I mean, should we try Guns Out Wednesday? Do you think we can make this happen?

I, I, I, well, I'm actually going to talk about that in a second, but so it's a good avoid lingerie.

Okay. Fair enough. Um, save athletic wear for after work, and, uh, don't forget to check footwear. Open-toe sandals are gross. No, no, it just says not appropriate.

Wow, dude, these are great. I love what I, I, I don't know if other people get as fired up about these. I get so fired up about these. I think because it's the same idea as, oh wow, these businesses are hidden in plain sight. You know, this object just didn't just get here. Someone made it come here. All of these occasions, these, these sayings, these, these holidays. They didn't just pop up out of nowhere. Somebody made them happen. And when you find out that it's some marketing dork, it's some marketing dork somewhere that was like, you know what? Like, how do we— spring sales are slow. Spring sales are slow. Spring, spring, spring fling. No, spring clean. No, spring cleaning. And it's like, yes, that's how we're going to get people to buy cleaning products in the spring. I love that. I love that just a mad ad man somewhere in the world can just shift how people do things. There's a great we did an episode with Craig Clements about exactly this.

Was it like leaky gut?

He did prebiotics, but he didn't talk too much about that. It was, he was talking about the ones that have, like the ones you're talking about, like why we eat bacon for breakfast, why we drink orange juice, right? Like where orange juice came from. And like all these things that today just seem like, I don't know, this is what we do. It's just staples of the of people's diet. It's just tradition. And it's like, no, no, that wasn't tradition. Or, you know, the classic one is toothpaste. He talks about how at a certain time, about only 6% of the population brushed their teeth. And so when they wanted to increase sales of toothpaste, he said, well, we can't just sell more toothpaste to the 6% of people who already brush their teeth. We need to get the other 94% of people to start brushing their teeth. How are we going to do that? And that's when he came up with that campaign.

Not Craig, but Claude Hopkins. It was, It was like, rub the tongue on the, on your teeth and you feel that film.

Yeah. One of, one of them. Exactly. It was like, you know, basically saying, take your tongue, rub it, rub it on your teeth. You feel that film. That's, and he, and people did that as soon as they read it, they do it, they'd stick their tongue there and then it's gross and you're like, there's a way to get that off. And then you'll have that Hollywood pearl smile. And then people wanted that, right? And so that created this movement. And then by the end of that campaign, something like 70 or 80% of people now brush their teeth in America. It was like a huge shift that happened just off of that one ad man, that single big idea. And I love these. I've really actually like toyed with the idea of writing a book about just these, these crazy ad men and then the way that they've actually shifted culture.

Yeah. And, and, and that fascinates me as well. And like another one is like Wall Street Journal. And so they try to like, they, they, they sort of nailed it, but it hasn't permeated. It hasn't stuck with us, but it was the idea of once you graduate college, The gift that you get is a Wall Street Journal subscription, just like I think Rolex did. It was like, once you, you know, President's Club is you get a Rolex if you sell, if you hit some sales quota, right? Like, or you become president of whatever. And so I was thinking, what other things haven't been hijacked that can be? And so I've got a few examples, but the first one being Friendsgiving. So Friendsgiving is what like 20-somethings who are single, it's what they celebrate instead of Thanksgiving with the family, they do Friendsgiving. In their town or in the city that they're living in. And so I think Friendsgiving is one that there's not a clear winner as to who owns Friendsgiving, but we can make it an entire week of being thankful for your friends. And you will do various gestures, including having them over for dinner to show your, uh, how appreciative you are that they are now your friends. And so we could sell gift boxes, we could sell gratitude journals, we could do digital cards, we could do all types of stuff. And by the way, speaking of cards. Hallmark is like one of the inventors of like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, things like that. Uh, the other one, graduation season. So turning into a life transition planning or celebrating new life phases, all because of graduating. So we're gonna call it graduation season. And so what do you get for graduation season? You get financial planning subscriptions, productivity tools, career coaching, travel discounts. That's for graduation season. You said you've thought about this. What are other ones that you've thought about?

Oh, I mean, come on.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like examples of things where you're like, that's amazing that they pulled that off.

Uh, like Craig talked about the Otis elevator one, which I thought was amazing.

What was that?

So he basically talks about how back in the day elevators got invented far before they were used. What does that mean? So the elevator gets invented, but people didn't want to use them. They didn't want to, they didn't, they're scared. They're scared. Because there were situations where elevators would just plummet and you just plummet to your death. So it's like, okay, no thanks. And the consequence of that is, think about it, if you don't have elevators, you don't have tall buildings, right? Because people are only going to go up so many flights of stairs. So like New York was like, you know, 4 stories high. There was just no, there was no buildings taller than that. So cities were kind of limited in how big they could be. And this guy Otis ends up creating a, um, an elevator with automatic brakes. Okay. So Otis creates the automatic braking elevator. He's like, this is it. This is going to be amazing. Everybody's going to buy my elevators. And if you look today, by the way, you go to any elevator, you'll see a little thing on the wall. It almost always says Otis. But it didn't happen right away and he couldn't figure out why. He's like, this has automatic brakes. It solves the problem, but nobody believed him. And so Craig talks about how one of the techniques that the marketers use is a—

but they have to like break the elevator and like a film it, like getting caught.

Does Craig have a book? I got to re-listen to that one. Does Craig have a book?

This is after that episode. I hit Craig up and I was like, hey, I want to write this book with you. And we talked about it. We both got really excited about it, but we're both busy. So this might be the motivation to rekindle that project.

Dude, the 7 human hijacks?

I wrote the, uh, I wrote the intro for it. It's pretty dope. I'll read it to you sometime.

Oh, that is awesome. I'm gonna have to go listen to that 'cause that was like 2 years ago and I remember listening to it and think he's amazing.

What are the 7 human hijacks? Like, what are they?

Sounds like I succeeded and got you curious. You're going to have to pay $14.99 and get the book.

Like, is it literally like 7 different, like, tactics or is it 7 different examples of tactics?

Tactics. And then each one has examples and you stack them. So what he showed was like, you know, for example, one of the tactics is spectacle. Like I told you about the Otis elevator.

So like a spectacle would be one of the seven.

Yeah. Like a spectacle is one of the seven, but like even the thing about like take your tongue and put it on your teeth. So like a, um, like a, like a magic trick, basically. It's like the thing, you know, but remember the thing where people used to, that power band or whatever, those bracelets, and they made you like hold your arm and they're like, look, you see how now you can do it. Put your arms out and watch. I can't push you over. Right.

And wow.

That's sort of, um, that's what I forgot what he called it, but that sort of magic trick. Is, uh, is one of the things where it's a, it's a demonstration, a powerful demonstration, right? So you can demonstrate on the person themselves. You can get them to feel it and feel it themselves in order to, to, to want to buy a product.

Did Craig come up with this idea of 7 Human Hijacks or did you come up with it on the pod?

Uh, so he, he was gonna come on and it was like, cool, we could talk about your business. We could talk about whatever. And I was like, you know, I said, I asked him one question. That's a very valuable question. I said, What's the best talk you've given recently? Like, have you given like a presentation or a talk at all that just like really killed? Like you could just tell the audience loved it. He's like, oh dude, I did this one talk inside my company just to get them fired up. He's like, basically my company is like a giant marketing company and I wanted them to come into work and not just feel like, oh, we need to raise sales by like 7% this quarter. Like, no, like he's like, I wanted him to realize, yo, marketers, you don't just drive some revenue or lift sales by X percent. Like, A marketer can literally change the way that society works. And he's like, so to get them fired up about that, I told them these examples of stories that they did. And then he's like, when I was putting them together, I realized it's the same set of techniques that they've been using across these 8, 10 examples, just the same, same set of tactics, these hijacks that they've been using. And he's like, that could be cool. And I was like, yes, do that on the, on the pod.

Check this out. If you Google 7 Human Hijacks, Craig Clements. The first post is on Reddit and it says Craig Clements on MFM talking about the 7 human hijacks and how to use them in your marketing. And it links to this amazing post that this guy, uh, wrote where he lists the 7 on r/marketing. Yeah, it's so good.

You know what he called them? He called it, he called the SIGs, uh, torches of freedom.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's what the, the newspapers, he, so he then put somebody in the crowd where the journalists were and he said that out loud to the journalists who then went and wrote that in their story. Like they, they lit up these torches of freedom.

Um, you see those ladies up there, guy? Those are, uh, those are, uh, those are torches of freedom. That's what those are.

This is what Jewel needs to do. And he used to be like, these are vapes of freedom that these kids are using.

Oh, look at that guy, that's a, that's a sex machine that he's using. He's gonna have sex with so many people because he's using that thing.

Even, even that same— so then I think it was like Lucky Strike or whoever, their brand color was green, and green was like not in vogue at the time. And he's like, yeah, the women don't want to buy it because these cigarettes, the box is not fashionable. It's like, do we need to rebrand? He's like, Hold my beer. Don't rebrand. And so instead he got those same women to go to the, whatever the big, um, like fashion, you know, like, like the Met Gala type of thing. And all of them wore green. They all wore that same green color dress. And so then green became cool for women. Like, you know, it's basically, it became in trend right after that. And then, you know, the sales of that, that, um, that brand went up basically because he made the color cool. And it's kind of just cool to see somebody who can puppeteer society in this way. I'm summarizing it like a 9-month-old episode, so I might have some of the details wrong here.

This Reddit poster said, side note, a lot of these stories are documented in this amazing book called Propaganda. Yeah, and that's the Bernays book, right?

It's a hard read, dude.

I have wanted to read it, but it seems like intimidating. What's so hard about it?

You know, these old books are just like so dense. It's not an easy read. I don't know. My brain is very simple. Like a lot of people recommend books to me. They're like, oh, this is a great book. Have you read, you know, René Girard, like Memetic Theory? It's like, oh, I'm interested to go buy the book. And I'm like, I'm just too dumb to read this. Like I'm too dumb.

I even read the—

I do not have the attention span to read something like this.

I read like the Memetic Theory, like summary book. Like what was that one that came out recently? And it was still hard.

I still read like a third of that one.

I read that. That was like the Malcolm Gladwell version of like René Girard. And I like read it and I'm like, So I want what other people want. Is that it? Right. Uh, like that's the— it was— I read the whole thing and I was like, I don't understand why this is so many words. What am I missing? Uh, and so, but I've heard about this book. I've, I've heard all about this, uh, book Propaganda. Uh, it would be fun to read, or at least try to read.

There's something about books that are like more than 50 years old where their brains were just able to like, you know, they spoke differently, they talk, they, they talk differently, they, they, they write differently. And for whatever reason, my brain can't really process it very well. So I kind of need somebody to like translate into modern speak or into like simpleton speak for me.

Yeah, I think maybe I'll try and do that. This guy, this seems like a cool book. Oh, the guy who wrote it was born in 1891 and he died in 1995. Wow. He saw a lot. All right. Let me tell you, let me tell you about something that I did. So on, did you see, you probably didn't see this, but on Friday I tweeted that I'm going to Yale's campus. I've tweeted that I'm going to go check out Yale because it's like an old historical place. And I wanted to like do something interesting for the weekend, something easy on Saturday. Tweeted it out. I got like a lot of replies and it was like kind of overwhelming on what to do. So on Saturday morning, we just drive up there and I just go to the busiest just like part of the town where I think like, I'll just figure it out when I get there. I show up, I see a student tour. Like if you're a prospective student, you know, like when you go with your mom and dad and I just like slip in. Yeah. I just like get in. I was like, I just like pop in and like, it's pretty funny cuz it's Sarah and I who I don't think either of us look young enough to be students. And then I've got my baby like strapped to my chest.

Well, I gave it away.

Yeah. So we're just like, cat, we're like, we like just like are at the back of this like student-led tour listening in. And then out of nowhere, this kid, I guess he's not that much of a kid, but he's like 20 years old. He goes, hey Sam. And I go, what's up, man? He goes, hey, I, I'm a big fan of the pod. I listen religiously. I saw that you were going to be here. So, uh, can I show you around? And I was like, yeah, I would love that. What are you, what are you doing here? What are you doing today? He's like, well, I saw that you were coming and I just went to the most busy place there was. And I just hoped that I was going to see you. And here you are. And so this kid gave me the—

and now I didn't think through what happens after that, but it was great.

And like, by the way, that's like the third time that's happened. And I love when that happens because I, like, he's doing me a favor of like, I would love like a local to like show me around. And so he shows me all this amazing stuff. So have you heard of Skull and Bones?

The secret society of Yale where presidents are in or all that? Is it legit? What is it?

It's quote a secret society, but I don't know like how much of a secret it is when there's like a building and like, it's like a, like, it's like a nonprofit with like an endowment. So like, I don't know, like what, I don't know what the secret is. I don't know like what, what secret, but it was just cool to like see this building that I've read about. And then we went and saw this old graveyard. It's the oldest graveyard in America. And I was looking through it and I'm going to explain to you why I'm obsessed with old stuff, particularly the Ivy, the Ivy League. So it's kind of like a nerdy thing of mine where I like, I've been to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, a bunch of others. Cause I just love like touring these old schools. They're just cool. We go to this old graveyard and we saw Noah Webster's grave. You know who Noah Webster is? Have you heard that name?

Dictionary Webster?

Is that him? The dictionary, Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the guy who invented the dictionary. And I just was like looking at this, this, old graveyard and next to him was Charles Goodyear, the guy who created vulcanized rubber, which created Goodyear tires. And it was awesome. It was so cool. And I'm actually really envious of you that you went to Duke, this like historical old institution, because it was so cool to like be around history where like someone came up with something and they literally invented or standardized the English language, like something that like shapes history and it's still an, you know, they've still impacted the way that we've done things.. And so it was an awesome, awesome weekend to like see all this old stuff because it inspired me. You know how like when you get behind the computer like every single day and you're like, I'm gonna do something that just makes a little bit of money. Sometimes you kinda get in these ruts of like thinking small, right? It was very inspirational to like see Yale and see this old institution that has lasted for centuries and how big and global it was. It was very, very cool. And I wanna give a shout out to that kid. I don't wanna say his name 'cause he said he wanted to be low key, but I wanna give him a shout out for showing me around.

That's awesome. Most white person hobby ever to go to a graveyard. You'll never see, you'll never see, uh, non-white tourists hanging out in a graveyard. It's not, not a, not a thing we do, dude.

It was awesome.

It was great. So you, you saw the Webster's Dictionary Goodyear and you're like, all right, I'm gonna come back and podcast. What, what, what was your, what are you gonna do? What's the move?

You know, it, it kind of put me into a little bit of a crisis where like I was asking that, but like, you know, this podcast is definitely part of it. You know, I don't know about you, but I sometimes think like, this is like, a podcast is not like impactful compared to like, we're talking to guys who are inventing robots that are doing X, Y, and Z, or like, who are going to the moon. But a lot of these guys were authors that I, whose like, uh, whose grave I saw, and I was still inspired by them. And so I felt a little bit inspiration of that, but there was a little bit of a crisis of like, oh man, like it's important to do something like that can impact people for, for centuries.

Pars thesaurus.

I don't know.

Just putting that out there. See what, see how that lands. I feel like you're good with, uh, coming up with alternative phrases for things.

So instead of saying, you know, that's just because I don't know the real phrase and I can't pronounce the words. So when I mumble, it just sounds like, did you, did you get this feeling at Duke where it was cool to be around like old, like historical things that have lasted for a long time?

I know exactly what you mean. There is definitely a vibe and a feeling when you're at something that is not just bigger than yourself, but sort of timeless. The problem with Duke and other Southern schools that have this is like, you're like, oh wow, who made, you know, what, what is this? And it's like, This is the Slave Wall. It's like, oh yeah, okay, never mind. Uh, it's like, what's the name of this road? It's like, this is Tobacco Road. We had tobacco plantations. It's like everything is, uh, there's like a sort of, um, dark side to a lot of the history there. So that wasn't cool, but the rest of it is. In fact, I used to love going to the, the, like the center of Duke's campus is the chapel. And I used to go there all the time, even though I'm not religious, but just the aura, the vibe, like the vibe of a church is kind of unmatched, to be honest. Great. And, um, So yeah, I really love, really love that.

Here's why I like Silicon Valley and why I like old stuff. It's kind of similar, which is I love thinking about things that we take for granted. So for example, like buildings that have been there for a long time or that are really large, or even just like your streets or institutions like Yale. And I'm like, how did someone create something that became such an institution that we take it for granted and we don't even like reflect on like how this became a thing. And Silicon Valley is cool because it's ideally the outcome is that you are creating something in real time that will become an institution, like an Airbnb, like a Google, where it becomes a verb, right? Uh, like I'm gonna, you know what I mean? And you get to see that happening. And I think it's really cool to be in Silicon Valley to see the beginning of hopeful institutions in the, in the making. And then also go and seeing the old stuff of like, this is how it's done.

There's a, or even just a museum. Have you ever heard of the Museum of American Finance? It's this thing in New York City where it's like a museum for like the history of finance. And frankly, it's badass. It's awesome. And just like a place to like go and like physically explore all that YC has done. It is kind of interesting.

It's just like Bill Ackman's loafers. What's inside this thing? What is the Museum of Modern Finance? Of what? Of finance?

Yeah, it's a Museum of American Finance. So if you look at a photo, it's just like, It shows like, here's what like the stock tickers used to look like. And people would stand here and like trade like in the 1800s. And then like, then it switched to have like to the phones were on the floor or you do this, whatever. Like tells the history of it and then like important things related to it. But it's a museum in downtown Manhattan.

That's cool. I like that, dude.

This is a fun episode.

Yeah, that was a banger.

All right, that's it. That's the pod.

I feel like I can 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.