Five +$10M Ideas (from a guy who's done it 3 times)
All right. We have Shiel today here, who is by my call, the most interesting man in tech. And that is a big claim. And I'm aware of the power of my words, but I did not stutter. 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. Shiel, I think I've told you this before, but I think of all people, I feel like you live in this beautiful blend of you do things that make you successful, but then you do a lot of things that just seem like a lot of fun and they're random and you're letting, you know, life kind of bounce you in whatever direction it's going to take you. And it's kind of inspiring. And Sam, I know it's inspiring for you because Sam is a perfect square and he just likes to be a perfect square and he doesn't know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you. Sam, is that right?
Yeah. I mean, he's inspiring to me. Like, he just does the silliest stuff. But let's just say, so Shil, here's like, I'll brag on your behalf. So basically you have what, a $320 million VC fund. You've built a business called Thistle to $100 million in revenue and you've built another business that sold domains. I think you've sold half a billion dollars in domains. You've done all this amazing stuff, but then you do like the silliest things. Like you did like an online version of The Bachelor. You, you were in a Justin Bieber music video. Like you do ridiculous stuff.
You got married sponsored by Taco Bell in the metaverse. Yeah. You had a wedding in the metaverse. Taco Bell somehow. I don't know. Don't even know what that is.
I didn't know about that. That's awesome.
What was that?
Oh, it's a long story, but yeah, Taco Bell sponsored my wedding. We had a series. I figured like if you're going to have a wedding, um, it's a great excuse to bring your friends together. And so I was like, and it's, it's an excuse for all your friends to come together as, as many times you do it, they're all going to come. So we had 6 weddings and 9 wedding-related events over the course of a year. One of which was sponsored by Taco Bell because we entered a contest and my amazing wife let me do this.
Yeah, makes sense. I don't even know what to make of all this.
But it makes sense.
I went back and I listened because you've been on the podcast way back when I first started it because you were a friend of mine in San Francisco and I wanted to have interesting people on the podcast. So back in 2019, You're probably in the first 20 episodes, and I actually went back and listened to it this morning because I forgot all of it. I, I don't remember any of this, so I'm gonna repeat a couple of the stories. I actually wanna start, you brought some ideas, opportunities you see, things like that. I wanna get to those, but I wanna start with maybe the relatable side hustle. Can you talk about one of the way, one of the early ways you made money, which was this story about the iPod mini? I don't even know if you remember the full, full story here, but, uh, can you tell this iPod mini hustle story?
Yeah, I was like a new graduate, college graduate. I was working a job. They gave me an iPod mini, which is, um, the iPod had come out, it was white, and then the mini came out, it was smaller, and it was available in 4 colors, uh, blue, yellow, pink, and green. And right after I got it, my headphones got stuck in in a bike I was riding and broke. And Apple was not selling those headphones, like those iconic headphones that I wanted. Apple wasn't selling them. So I had this idea of like, let me make these headphones and I'll make them in the colors matching the iPod mini. And so I went to China for the first time in my life just to like figure this out. And I like—
You went for this reason?
I went for this reason. Yeah. I just, I was working a full-time job. I took a 2-week vacation and I was like, let me spend those 2 weeks in China.
And I— like, where in China? China's a big place. You were just like, I'm just going to go, I'll find a guy. What was the plan?
Okay, so I, I went to Hong Kong actually originally. Like, I looked up trade shows and there was this big consumer electronics trade show. So I was like, I'm just going to go to this trade show and then I'll figure it out. And I hadn't booked anything else. So like, I went to this trade show. There were thousands of booths. And so like, I just went around having no idea about anything, just like went to these booths, found ones that made headphones. Their English was very poor. I have— my Chinese is negligible. So it was a lot of like, they pull out a calculator and I'm like, this is what I want. And then like I had some sketch drawing that I had made of what I was looking for. And then they are like entering a number into a calculator. They're like, that's, you know, $5. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. That's like 83 cents. And then I actually went and visited their factories in like Southern China, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And it was awesome. Like it was a really cool way for me to get into business.
How much time passed between your headphone breaking and you're like, oh, I should sell headphones and I'm in China?
Uh, I think it was like a couple months.
So you have a job, you decide to go, you're, you're like, I'm just gonna kind of fund this off my savings, or did you place the initial— was a big initial order? How did you do it?
Uh, the initial order, it was cheap. It was, you know, 10,000 headphones. And I think, yeah, I mean, for me at the time, it was a lot of money. Like, it was my first job. Um, but I think it was like a total outlay of $20,000.
Gotcha. And so do you, you make these headphones, which by the way, it seems like an insane oversight by Apple to not sell the headphones.
Uh, it made no sense.
Like you're saying, they were iconic at the time and you have to market these. How are you going to sell like 1,000 or 10,000 pairs of headphones?
So there were like, now there's a very, a playbook, quantitative marketing, all this stuff. At that time on the internet, there wasn't a playbook to follow. So I started out like going after blogs. There were a lot of blogs when I was like, I'll give you a giveaway for your, for your readers. Uh, that was, that was one tick mark. And then one that was pretty awesome is Facebook had just come out and at this time Facebook was limited to college campuses. And the way that they monetized Facebook at that time was you could set up a flyer. So like I went to Carnegie Mellon. I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at Carnegie Mellon. And it was basically for like a flyer. Like if I was throwing a party, I could advertise on Facebook. And so what I did was I went back to my high school friends who went to the biggest colleges. So like University of Michigan, Ohio State, like those, Penn State, those kind of colleges where they had like 30 or 40,000 students. And I said, give me your Facebook ID. Um, and they gave me their Facebook login. I paid them something. And I was able to market to those audiences for still $10 a day. Like, you want the biggest audience you can for that $10 a day. And so we, we did in Michigan, we did like the colors of Michigan, like blue and yellow, stuff like that. Um, and it was a cool, it was a cool little business.
Dude, that's, that's amazing that Facebook used to let you do that. Just to like market to your whole campus for $10 a day is insane.
How much did it end up making?
Do you plan anything? So like one of the parts of this episode is that like you're pretty spontaneous and but, but, but you have, you know, a $300 million fund. You have $100 million, your company, who knows what that's worth, but at least probably $100 million. So like pretty like epic success, but You also do really random things, spur of the moment type of decision-making.
Yeah, I just like, I think I've always chosen like the more adventurous path, I would say. And then I think something I get from my grandfather, my mom's dad, was like, he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas. He would, at the time it was different, he would like read about something in the newspaper and be like, I should start something. So like, In India, when TVs were coming out, like growing up, like there's only like one TV station and then expanded from there. And he was like, oh, TVs are going to be big. And he started a TV manufacturing company knowing nothing about anything. Like he just was like, I'll just learn how to make TVs. And then he set up a manufacturing company. It was hard to get a phone in India. So he created this like payphone company that allowed people to just use payphones. And like, he would just read about something in the newspaper. And like me as a kid, he would actually like mail me like clips from the newspaper. And he'd be like, should we start this company together? I'm like 15 years old. And he's like giving me an idea. And he had some good ones. Um, one of the ones I remember, like I just looked this up recently, he passed away many years ago, but he had this idea for like, he looked up ancestry.com. Great business. And he was like, in India, people love their ancestry. Why don't we start one for India? And that was an idea he had for me. Good idea.
Wow. Did anybody do that, by the way? Is there now an ancestry?
I actually don't know.
Is that still up for grabs?
Still probably a good idea for my, my grandfather who now passed away many years ago.
Yeah. That's wild. Sam, on the first episode he did, he talked about the domain business. It's kind of a longer story, so he probably won't do it again. But, uh, the, the, the short version of it is you were selling, uh, you were not selling, you were the auctioneer for people who wanted to buy new domain, like, uh, uh, top-level domains. So like .photo, .app, .blog, whatever. And so Amazon and Google and rich guys would come and they would try to bid and you guys were the auction to do that. And you would take 4% of the auction. You sold like, I don't know, $500 million worth of top-level domains. But one of the things he talks about, he's like, yeah, so my co-founder was this, expert in auction theory, and I met him on a train in India.
Yeah.
And he would just— he just had these little things he threw out like, yeah, I was just happened to be on a train in India, met this guy, ended up starting a company with him.
Was he an American in India or an Indian?
He's German.
That's ridiculous. What year was that?
I met him in 2006.
When Dharmesh came on the podcast, Dharmesh, the founder of HubSpot, he— yeah, we talked about the Steve Jobs speech that he gave at Stanford. That's pretty famous. A lot of people know it now. He talks about like, you can't, you can't connect the dots, you know, looking forward. You can only connect the dots of your life looking backwards. And the famous example is he talks about like how he used to love studying calligraphy and fonts and he got really into that. He took courses on it. And then only later when he started Apple computers, he made sure that the first set of Apple computers had these like beautiful fonts and no other computer company cared about that. But he did. He connected those two dots, his passion for X and his passion for Y, and they both came together. And, um, Dharmesh pointed out, he's like, you know, I think a lot of people look at that and they just sort of shrug, like, well, I guess I just can't connect the dots, like, you know, so don't even try. He's like, no, what that means is your job is to be a dot collector. And you, yeah, the dots will connect later, but like, you gotta be a dot collector. And so when I say that, like, I guess like, what are some examples for you of, of dot collecting in your life where at the time you didn't really fully realize it, but you chose more adventurous path or you followed your curiosity and then good things later ended up happening?
I think there's a lot of that. Um, and I, I love that idea of being a dot collector. Um, I think there's a lot of like just saying yes to stuff. So one, I'll just say, I'll say yes to a lot of crazy ideas that people throw at me. Investing, of course, you have to be discerning. Um, when I'm investing other people's capital and, and so for the fund, I think we're, we're very discerning, but, uh, for ideas for myself or like People invite me to speak at a conference in some random country. I've been to like Latvia, Saudi Arabia, like all these countries that people don't go to, um, just because somebody invited me. And I think that I've learned a lot by doing those things. One of the crazier things I did is I lived in India on a dollar a day.
Yeah, it's funny. And I did it for a year. So like I moved to India. I was I was 24 years old and I lived for 1 year on around $1 a day.
And what does that get you in India? Is that like a— like, is that like a McDonald's value meal? Like, I don't know the— like the—
or yeah, maybe like a McDonald's value meal per day. And so I think like what I learned from that, I think it was like supremely influential in my life. And I learned one, like, I don't need a lot of money to be happy. Like, I was so happy in that time. And like, I went from, I was a management consultant in the United States, like making a six-figure salary, and I moved to India on a dollar a day. And I, I re— I, I had a convertible here. In India, I had like a bicycle, and even the bicycle was like a big deal for me to buy. Uh, and I just had so much fun. And there, there's this concept in India called jugad, which is a Hindi word. It means like, there's no perfect word for it, but it kind of means like creative problem solving. And I think like I really learned a lot of creative problem solving during that year, like just reusing things. I learned like the importance of community, resourcefulness.
Wait, so you spent $365 in one year? That was it?
Yeah.
Does that include rent? And what type of program is this?
Um, it, the program no longer exists. It was called Indie Corps and it was like a volunteer program. And part of it was like, they want, I wanted, so I was working for Kiva, a nonprofit, uh, microfinance institution. And I, I wanted to live like my borrowers. And so the people that we were lending money to were living on a dollar a day. So I was like, I'm going to do it too.
So did you just like have a midlife crisis when you were 25? Like, why did you do this in the first place?
What was the why? Yeah, the why. Is kind of silly in hindsight, but actually I watched a movie, a Hindi movie called Rang De Basanti, where they're like, India isn't just going to change. You have to change it. And I was thinking like, I grew up in America, but I have a lot of affinities to India. I want to change India. So I had this like lofty ambition. And then I don't think I did anything for India. Like I did a lot for myself, but I don't think I accomplished anything for India.
That's interesting. I was trying to convince Sean, uh, like 3 weeks ago. I think we were, it was like live, like don't spend any money for a week or something like way less significant than what you did. And I got like a hard no, a hard no.
I didn't watch that movie, dude. I wasn't inspired.
In hindsight, it was stupid. Like I got, I got super sick. I got typhoid and I, well, besides that, yeah, besides that, no, overall it was an amazing experience. And actually, like, I have so many, so many of my close friends today are from that time.
There's, there's another good, uh, dot collector story, I think, for you. You correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you were one of the first investors in Flexport. Is that right?
Yeah.
And, but you didn't just like, it wasn't just like a traditional VC move where somebody cold pitches you and then you write this check because you're like, yeah, I totally see the future of freight forwarding. No, it wasn't that. There was some You did something. You just said yes to something before that. I don't know the full story, but I, I know that it wasn't just a cold pitch that walked into your office.
And by the way, just so we have context, what's, what's Flexport valued-ish now and what was it when you invested? Like, how big of a deal is this?
Yeah. So, um, I actually don't know the most recent, but it's in the several billions of dollars. And when I invested, it was a $10 million valuation.
Um, something like $10 million to $3 billion, let's call it.
Wow. Okay. All right, go ahead.
Sorry. And, um, okay, so Flexport, uh, it's a digital freight forwarding company is one way to think about it. If you have a bunch of stuff in China and need to get it here, there's a bunch of steps required in between and they'll help you do those steps.
Like when you wanted your iPhone, uh, your, your iPod Mini, uh, headphones to get here, they gotta get onto a container, get onto a boat, get from the boat to the port, port to the truck, truck to your warehouse.
How does all that happen? Go through customs, all this other stuff. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it just made sense to me that this needed to be digital. It's a real pain in the ass if you, if you don't use Flexport or something like it. Um, and so I met Ryan at a party and we bonded over some really funny things, which were, um, he, I think he's a really hacky guy. Like, he just figures stuff out. He started the company by himself, uh, non-technical, like, outsourced team originally, and then eventually he built, he built up a lot of stuff internally. But, um, we were buying Uber credits in our name.
So I did that.
You did that too?
Was it what your guy did to you?
No, no, no. We were like, I was advertising Google AdWords for my referral code.
And at times at that time, I would buy free rides from this guy in India who was probably doing what we're doing. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. So we were effectively doing the same thing, like just advertising for our name and we kind of bonded over that and became friends. And then when he— what he had— he had done some previous businesses in the import-export space. And so I was like, dude, whatever you would— whatever you start, I'm going to be investing in it. And, and it obviously turned out great.
That's amazing. What— isn't it crazy, by the way, how, like, so, you know, I don't know what Ryan's worth, but like, you know, if you have a multi-billion dollar company, you're in the vicinity of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of net worth. So you're like— it's like you're a big shot. And just 8 years prior, you're selling Uber credit. Like, like, and that's a pretty common story, I think.
For sure, for sure. Silicon Valley, it's like so many people that you meet. I, I guess like I've lived in San Francisco for 12 years now, and I— this is like a common story. There's a bunch of people I met early on who were just like hustling and then eventually started something that became big.
That's so funny.
Um, Sean, that's actually like— you talked about the surface area or like all the dot collecting. I think part of it is being in San Francisco. Like I moved here in 2012 and there were just a lot of interesting things happening. Like if you were out meeting people, you met people doing interesting things.
The way you're saying you live is different than what you probably advise the companies who you invest in to live. Just like saying yes to a variety of things, which like, if I wanted to like paint this in a bad way, I'd be like, well, you're ADD and you can't focus and like, you're missing out on like year 8, 9, 10, and year 20, where all like a lot of the compounding, like growth comes from. Um, how do you balance like those two things of being focused, which is like what every VC will ever tell a founder versus saying yes to speaking in Latvia or going to China to start a new company?
It's, it's such a good question. And I think the way I think about it is I'm probably more of your zero to one guy than I am your like one to a hundred. And so like I've started a lot of things and then mostly found other people to actually run them over time. And like some of the things I started got to exit and, and, and were successful. But if you want to have like huge success, multi-billion dollar companies, which is like what we're hopefully investing in, you need to be really focused. And so. I would not invest in most of the companies that I would start. Like if I, if I were running a VC fund, these companies aren't VC fund, VC type opportunities.
What's the story of Thistle? Because I remember we went out to dinner once many years ago and you were like, you started this, like you helped start, I don't know what your role was, but you helped start some local food delivery business. And at the time there was just a bunch of them going out of business. Sprig was going out of business and it was like, It was like, looked like a bloodbath. And you were like, no, we're kind of approaching it like not the venture-funded way. I started ordering from it. I started eating it all the time.
I love Thistle.
And Sam just said it's now $100 million a year business. What is, can you tell, what is the origin of this business?
Yeah. So the origin is myself and my roommate in San Francisco at the time, we were, we felt like we were just like making unhealthy choices and like eating the fastest thing possible to get back to work or whatever. And the idea was like, what if there was healthy food in your fridge already? You would just, that would be the most healthy thing you could eat and most convenient thing you could eat. And at the time, as you said, there were these companies, Sprig, Munchery, SpoonRocket were the most popular ones in the Bay Area where you could order and for like $10 or $15 in 20 minutes or even 10 minutes, food would show up at your door. And we were like, should we invest in these companies? Should we start one of these companies? I ended up driving for Sprig. I was like, let me sign up to be a driver.
There he goes again.
That is so funny. And yeah, and for those two people who don't know, Sprig is started by all of our friend Gagan, and it was one of the innovators before DoorDash, or I think before DoorDash.
You were driving there as like due diligence?
Yeah, I like signed up to be a driver and to like, yeah, diligence., and I was like, okay, so there are a bunch of problems with this model. I don't know if this is going to be a massive business. And the problems are, one, they're wasting a ton of food. Like, you cannot predict how much food you need on any given day. And they were like, yeah, we have this AI model. Like, we're going to, um, predict if there's a Giants game, it's this. If this— it's actually like kind of impossible to predict. So wasting like a third of their food. Drivers all are driving at the same time. It's like lunchtime. Or dinner time. That's when it's all happening. And then routes aren't optimized. So like you're kind of driving one place, then you go and you have to go somewhere else across the city. So we were like, can we solve this? And so we set out to solve it. And the idea was a subscription service. And the idea was you have to order by Friday your meals for the week. And there are people like, it doesn't work for me. Like I'm, I might be, I don't know what I'm doing tonight for dinner, but like somebody might invite me to something and I'll go. But a lot of people are more structured in life. And the idea was for those people, we can give them a meal plan and it's kind of like a pro, like a private chef might be and, um, do it at an affordable price point. And it's been great. Like the business is awesome. Thistle.co. If you're on the East Coast or West Coast, you can check it out.
Is it bootstrapped or do you guys raise funding?
We did ultimately raise funding. And we've raised a few rounds of funding, but not that much money over time.
But it's going to be— it's a good outcome for you personally.
Yeah, it should be. You know, look, I think food businesses are tough, low multiple businesses. And so I don't know what it's going to be. I haven't like, you know, I haven't like assigned any value to that equity, but hopefully it's going to turn out.
Is it still just in San Francisco? I remember at one point you had said it was like doing $20 million a year in just San Francisco. Is it— did it branch out to like 100 other cities now, or what?
So yeah, so it's all along the West Coast and the Northeast as well.
Yeah, I see it out where I live. I live out, uh, right outside of New York, and I, and I see— do I see billboards?
Uh, you might see billboards. You see a lot of bags. One, one kind of like fun thing is a lot of celebrities use them, and, um, you'll see like videos of celebrities on the internet, like, carrying the Thistle bag, which is kind of cool. Like, this mega famous person is carrying something that I helped create.
You know, you sent us a list of like 4, 5, 6 ideas, and interestingly, Sean, a few of them are in your wheelhouse involving schools. A few of them are in a thing or two that I know about, and I think it'd be interesting since you see so many ideas with the fund and you've been well connected in Silicon Valley for I don't know, 20 years now, if you could list out some of the interesting opportunities that you're kind of seeing.
I have some that are like maybe venture scale ideas and then a lot, most of my ideas are not venture scale, but I could talk about a few of them. One is I just got back from Florida. My parents moved to Florida. They moved to an Indian retirement community and it's called Shanti Niketan and it's not that well executed, but the idea is Indians, they like, this guy created a huge plot where he put up like 100 homes and then there's a community center where they have Indian food. They have like movie nights, stuff like that. It's really fun for old, for Indian people, for Indian retirees.
Do you have to be Indian to go or is it just like everyone who lives there is Indian? Yeah. But like, can I go and join?
Oh yeah, you can go check it out anytime. Yeah. Eat the food. And so the idea, it's a good idea. But it's not that well executed. And I've, I've just been thinking like, there are a lot of retirement communities out there and most of them are aligned to a single affinity, which is golf. And so like most retirement communities are built around golf, which is great for people who love golf, but there's so many other affinities out there that should have their own retirement community. And, you know, people are living longer than they did. So like people are still retiring at 65. But they have like, not only are they living longer, they're living longer, healthier lives. So like my parents are still like relatively healthy. I expect them to live another 20, 30 years. And you can build these communities where people like do whatever their affinity is. And so I think there's an opportunity here in building and like building a roadmap for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time.
Sean, don't you know someone in the, in the, in this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I've looked at this because. I found it fascinating, uh, for the same reasons that, that Sheila was saying. Well, first, they're good businesses, right? Because you're basically taking raw land and then you're like, you just do the math. You're like, okay, cool, we're gonna sell, let's call it 50 plots or 75 plots or 100 plots. And the numbers get pretty big pretty fast when you're buying these at a, you know, a raw state and you're able to sell them. But they also, one of the things that some of them are doing is they blend together the like different health spans. So for example, you can start there when you're just retired, but then you need some assistance, and then there's like assisted area, and then there's like you need a lot of assistance, and then you're at the kind of like the, the, the full, full service, uh, model. But you don't have to move, you don't have to like move very far, right?
You're just like, and your community is still there.
Yeah, you're still in the same community. You don't have to like, you know, do this like big cross-country move. It's not the scary thing. You just sort of, as your body, you know, goes down that gradient, you just sort of move down a different level of service in the community. And so that's super profitable when you do that. And the LTV of the customers, I mean, imagine, right, you're 20, 30 years in one of these communities. It's really high. And I know it because my parents kind of had the same reaction that Shiel's parents had, which is, yeah, I mean, that'd be great. I don't play golf, but if there was a place that had the food we like with people that we get along with, that speak the language, you know, that we have, have the same cultural values, and I was like, well, that's going to exist for every, every race, but also not just race. Like, what are other things that people bond over or is like the central pillar of their life? And how do you build communities around that? That seems, it seems very lucrative to me.
And on these things that you, when I think of an old home, I think of like Uh, like a hospital-looking center where, but these are like a plot of land where you buy a house.
Yeah. They bought a townhouse. Got it.
And you pay like a monthly fee.
Yeah. You pay monthly fee. You get food. Um, which is, you know, for Indian people, especially, I think a really big deal. And then they have like, they have a bunch of community events. Like they, they play like cards. They've, there's a community center. They play, they have movies, Indian movies going on. They have concerts. Actually, I talked about our weddings. My parents, one, one of the events that they had was a showcase of all of our wedding videos. And then like I called in, like we called in and did Q&A.
That's hilarious. Yeah. Cause I feel like, you know, this is like the country club model, but it's just for what else is there besides a bougie country club? Like what are the other ways that people could get together in a clubhouse and have, uh, you know, that, that would add a lot to their lives because it's pretty lonely. If you're older, you're living somewhere, you don't know other people, and the effort it would take to go make new friends or drive to places just for certain events versus having it almost like resort style for you, it just makes a lot of sense.
And we have a friend who came on the pod, Craig Fuller, who did this with airline or flying enthusiasts. So basically he bought a plot of land, he developed homes on it, he pre-sold a bunch of them, and basically the center of the property is instead of a golf course, it's an airplane hangar. So if you own like a Cessna or something like that, you could keep it there and you could live there. So, you know, it's like, I want to go fly this morning.
I'm just going to walk down the runway in the middle of the neighborhood, basically.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
So I think you could do this for a bunch of different affinities. Like I've talked to my Chinese friends and like their parents play a lot of mahjong and like stuff like that, that I think you could just build this around every affinity over time. So I think there's something there.
And I like these businesses that are high dollar value, meaning you're not going to be able to become a billionaire, but you can make tens of millions of dollars doing this. Definitely. And very high likelihood of success. Like, you don't need— like, Shil told you the idea. You don't need a stroke of genius now. Any— and like, 50 people could go do this and they would all— you know, it's just a matter of execution at this point. Like, if you just do, do the basic things.
Like, with all these retire— like, the— what do they call it? The silver tsunami? Like, is there a— Is there a shortage of space?
I think so. I think like the reason my parents pre-bought it was they, like the other Indian communities, they couldn't get in. Like the prices had increased so much or there just weren't, there weren't availability. So like they pre-bought into a new one.
So I think it has to be a doctor. It's actually a status symbol. You can't get into the community or you're just barred if your kid's not a doctor.
Dude, how much is a nursing home, by the way? Should I be budgeting for like? I was, uh, like, Sam starts worrying about it.
I'm worried about yours now.
No, I'm worried about it for my parents. I was, dude, listen to this.
So are you going to put your parents in a nursing home?
I don't know. Shame on you.
Indians could never do that.
Sometimes I think they like that, don't they? Like they want, I don't know. I thought it was like enjoyable. I don't fucking know. But so I was, I was meeting with a, like a financial advisor like 3 years ago and it was like 20 years in the future. I was like, what's that $250,000 a year?, spend. And he was like, oh, you're going to have kids, right? I was like, yeah, but I'm not going to have triplets. He was like, well, well, you're going to have one kid. And I assume that they're going to go to like a school that's in like the 85th percentile of cost. And so in 20 years, if you have kids in 2 years, it's going to be $250,000 a year. And I was like, dude, don't make up this bullshit. He goes, I didn't make it up. I just took the trailing like 20 years of growth for like Harvard or whatever 90th percentile cost school is. And I just applied that for the next 20 years. And that's just how I came up with it. And I was like baffled that it's going to be, I think it was maybe $150,000 a year. It was 6 figures. And now that I'm realizing with old people homes or nursing homes, I'm pretty sure that some of them are $10,000 and $20,000 a month today.
That's right.
That's how much it costs, which is insane, I guess. Uh, so like, what am I going to have to pay if my parents eventually want to do this? You know, is that, are we talking like half a million dollars a year.
It's not that high. Uh, but you know, you can, like, there's a range. So you can do a $3,000 a month bed. You could do an $8,000 a month bed. You could do $15,000, $20,000, depending on if you want to go basically the Ritz-Carlton.
Is $20,000 the fanciest?
I don't know. There's no upper end to anything in life, right? You can spend an infinite amount of money if you, if you decide to. Uh, but I would say like you, like nice places can be at $10,000, $15,000 a month., but also some of these are covered by insurance. Some of these are not, some of this is out of pocket, right? There's a whole bunch of different factors. I know that in also different cultures, like I said, shame on you, just kind of joking, but in Indian culture, it kind of is like that. Like there's an expectation culturally that either the parents move in with you or they're gonna have their own house and you're gonna have in-home care for them. So there's all these different ways that you could do care for elders. It could be that they're in a, uh, you know, a nursing home or a senior facility. Or it could be that you're paying for somebody to come to their house every day and help them manage day-to-day life at their house, which is obviously going to be a different cost. Um, you know, my grandparents, for example, they have their own house and they have basically round-the-clock somebody come, like, like a kind of a nurse that basically lives in their house that just helps them with everyday things to just function in their own home because that's what was comfortable for them.
That's cool.
I think for all those, any different, any of those different types of things, like being in the same place with a community makes sense because like your grandparents may not need that one person full-time, or they might, but like other people might want a fractional one. And it's so much easier if that person like lives in the community or comes to the community and can serve many people at once.
And a bunch of people tried this for like young 20-somethings after college. It's like an after-college community, blah, blah, blah. But this is way better because people are going to be in these for like 30+ years. Exactly. And they have money actually versus that 20-something. Yeah, they might spend 1 or 2 years after, after college doing this in a big city, but then they're going to kind of graduate out of it. So you're going to have this crazy churn all the time. I like your model better.
All right.
What's another opportunity? What's another idea you got?
Okay. So the idea is Yelp for professional services. So, and then I originally had this idea, I think before Sam, before Sam put out Sam's List. But the idea is, why is it so hard to know, like, which insurance brokers are good, which lawyers, which financial planners, which accountants? Like, how do I know who's good and is going to serve my needs? And like, there should be a site for that, and it's easily monetizable.
So I can give you guys an update. So Sean, uh, 10 or 8 months ago, I created this thing called Sam's List, samslist.co. Um, and it was like Yelp for accountants. And, um, I just did it because I needed an accountant, and I found an accountant, by the way, on the website. So it worked. Um, we— it, it's— it hasn't like taken off. This year it did $99,000 in revenue and a little bit of profit, and we have someone who's working on it. But what we're changing over is making it— we're, we're adding like a financial advisor category. But I completely agree with you of like having these review sites for for professional services is necessary. Everyone is begging us, by the way, if anyone wants to go do this, go for it. Everyone's begging us for Sam's List, but for agencies. I don't know anything about agencies, so I don't like, I don't know anything about that space, but that is one thing that people have been begging us for is to have an agency category. But I think that's just because I have a lot of agency owners who follow me on Twitter.
No, but I think if you look on Twitter, like people are constantly posting like, hey, I need help with this. Can, can anyone recommend an agency? I, I feel like, like, we have a website designer that I really like, and I feel like once every couple weeks I'm recommending him to somebody. And like, there should be a place where you could just search and find, like, I'm looking for an agency, I'm willing to spend X to Y, and you know, it should be a site that, that does everything. And maybe Sam's List is it.
It's fucking hard to pull these off, by the way. It's hard.
None of these things are easy.
Here's why they're hard. Like what we found was like, we had a lot of like mom and pop accountants on the website. And like, you're basically, imagine like, so what Sean did with Milk Road and what I did with The Hustle was we'd have advertisers, but the ideal situation is you have advertisers who are spending tens or hundreds of thousands, or once The Hustle got to a certain size, sometimes they're spending millions of dollars a year. But when you're working with like a mom-and-pop accountant, I'm basically selling packages for like $500. And you're like the mob, like knocking on their door, like, can I get my money? You know what I mean? And it like, yeah, you know, like the client hasn't paid yet, so I don't have the money yet, but I promise I'll get it to you next week. Like it becomes a little bit of a game like that. And so if you're going to do it, the ideal situation is that you're doing it. Accountants are basically, a lot of them are like mom-and-pop organizations. It's a pretty bad group to sell to. But like whatever organization or industry you want to do this for, it has to be where they're already spending a lot of money and it's bigger companies who can write bigger checks. Otherwise you're just going to end up like Yelp. Have you guys ever known, like the joke in San Francisco when we lived there was Yelp is where you go to learn how to do sales because it's such a hard sales job. And all they would hire anyone with a pulse and they would be like, all right, here's $40 grand a year and then you get commission. But if you hit your own target earnings, you're gonna make $200 grand a year, you're gonna be so rich. And they find out that they're having to go like get an ice cream shop to give them like $900.
Wasn't it more like threats than sales even? It was like, oh, this review is really hurting you, wouldn't you— well, don't you just wish that would go away? Yeah, I might be able to make that go away.
I, I never found any evidence of that actually happening though. Like, people have been like, provide me evidence. And I don't think— I don't think there's actual evidence of that happening. There is with the Better Business Bureau, by the way, but, but not with Yelp from what I can tell.
What, where did that come from? I came from business owners complaining about it. Who else would put that story out there?
Well, so people have said like, okay, if there's any proof of Yelp saying pay me money and you'll get a better review or that review will get knocked off, send it to me. And then nobody has ever sent it. Fair enough.
Fair enough. All right. What's, uh, what are the other, what's this Pearly Whites one? You got my attention.
Okay, so this is my wife's idea. There's something called a Drybar where you can just go get a blow dry of your hair. It's like kind of like an in-and-out thing, 20 minutes, and, and you get your blow dry. Um, my wife feels like she would like to get her teeth cleaned more than the twice a year that you're able to with a dentist on insurance. And so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth. They don't do any— they don't do x-rays, they don't do anything else. You're in and out, 20 minutes, $100, $120, something like that. And she would do that like every couple months, and that's the idea.
So she likes getting her teeth cleaned?
She likes getting teeth cleaned, which I, I think is weird. Like, I don't, but she does. And I, I could see people doing it like, oh, I'm going to an event, like, I'm gonna get my hair done, I'm gonna get my teeth done, teeth cleaned.
Well, I like the unbundling of like the dental checkup, right? It's like, what's the— what is the one part that people kind of would want the most or need the most often that if you separate it out of your normal dental kind of cycles, there might be just like a market for people who just want this. I kind of buy that, but I, I thought it would be teeth whitening, not cleaning.
That's part of it also. And, and actually, like, you probably make more money in the whitening side, but what you could do is actually like you standardize and like have a really nice looking space And dentists would franchise this and they'd be like, oh, I'm a dentist. I can open one of these. You need to have dental hygienists and, and a dent— in some states you need to have a dentist there. Um, but it doesn't have to be like, they don't have to be doing the work. They just have to be there.
Right. Dude, I went to my dentist and he had this sign, but like it stood out because everything in the dentist's office looked like a dentist office. It just looked like mom and poppy. And then there was one sign that looked really nice and this one sign was basically advertising kind of what you're describing. It was like a 20-minute teeth whitening for like $85 or whatever it was, some, some dollar amount. And I was like, what is this? Is this yours? And he's like, oh, actually, yeah, there's like this company that made this service that then we can then sell to our customers and they provide like the marketing and the name of this and they're trying to popularize this, but we just get incremental revenue because we're able to upsell this essentially. And I was like, oh, that's smart. It's basically like the Hunt Brothers pizza model. What they did for gas stations. They're like, hey, here's a, here's a pizza shop inside your gas station. Somebody's doing this for dental offices where they're putting in this like teeth whitening upsell program. And I was like, it's kind of work. I get it. It works. Cause otherwise, you know, the dentist offers like, you know, 1,500 services. If you really wanted to, you could go and ask them about it.
What's it called?
I don't remember the name of this one, but I, I don't think it was— I don't know how popular this is, but I remember just thinking, oh, this makes sense. I could see why it's a win for the dentist. It's a win for this company. And I could see why consumers would be— when you're just sitting there trapped in the chair, literally like strapped into the chair, it's the first thing you see in front of you. You stare at that thing for 15 minutes and you're looking at this before and after photo and you're like, yeah, cool, add that on. I'll take that. I'll take the whites.
Speaking of Hunt Brothers, another idea, and this is, uh, one of my best friends is doing this and I, I invested, but, um, it's called Pizzeria Luna. And the idea is when people go to hotels, they most often order pizza, like mid-range hotels, people order pizza constantly. Domino's is coming in. So the idea was, what if we gave you the ability to sell a high-quality pizza? And originally it was like, we'll give you the oven and the pizza that's like hand tossed, made in Italy, actually shipped over from Italy, tastes amazing. And, uh, and so a lot of hotels use Pizzeria Dall'Inna and then we have the table tents and all that other stuff.
Dude, this is a great idea. It's just Hunt Brothers, but for hotels and Italian. Is it working?
It's working. Yeah. It's been pretty successful. It's still fairly early. But, um, it's, it's doing really well.
And what's the hard part about this? Because like, um, you know, the Hunt Brothers thing, I think they started out doing wholesale ingredients. So they already had like a ton of infrastructure in place where they were already selling, you know, doughs and all that stuff to, to, you know, pizza shops all around the place. And that's why they were able to like just take the next logical step and create their own brand and then provide those same ingredients to the, to the, um, the gas station owners, is this really hard to spin up or was this actually like, you know, pretty doable?
I mean, it's complicated. Like, my friend is on a plane to Italy all the time. Like, he wanted to make sure it was like super high quality, something the hotels felt really proud to offer.
Wait, but why? I don't think I could tell if this pizza's from Italy. That's it. Like, like, would my taste buds know the difference between Kentucky and—
once he tells it, you're like, yeah, this is not cheap pizza.
It's not cheap pizza.
Like Italy, like, is that, you know how like, um, you know how like Florida has like Hollywood, Florida? Like it's a small town. Yeah. Can we call it like, you know, is there like an Italy, Kentucky?
Italy, Wisconsin.
Yeah. No, it turns out like the, the ingredients, like it just does taste better. Like they know how to do it there. It's actually, so what you're probably thinking is like, isn't it expensive to bring it over here? It's actually not. It's kind of worth it. And they have the experience and know-how. It's actually made like near Naples, which is where pizza comes from.
Dude, my dad, I remember when we were a kid, he saw this pizza place and the sign just said hand-tossed pizza and there was like a guy in the window tossing. And my dad wouldn't shut up about the hand-tossed pizza for like, you know, a year. And these things just work. I don't know why. There's something to it.
If it says world's greatest cup of coffee, I buy it every single time.
Oh, totally. That shit always works on me.
Do you guys know the Grey Goose story?
Yeah, the taller bottles.
The taller bottles. But also, so the, so the guy who started Grey Goose started it, by the way, when he was in his like 70s. He was like, he was like 70 years old and decided to start a startup.
Was he successful?
So he, before that, he had created, um, Jägermeister. Not created, but he had brought Jägermeister to the US and made it popular. So like, the Jägermeister story was, he's out one night. He was like part of the family alcohol business. His wife's, it was his wife's parents' business. And then they get in a fight, they kick him out, and he's like, all right, fuck this, I got to do something. And he's out one night, he sees people, he sees a German, like, group of friends sipping this, like, weird cough syrup looking thing. And it was Jägermeister. And it was like an after-dinner type of thing. And he's like, what is that? He inquires about it. He figures it out. And he decides, I'm going to become the US importer of this thing called Jägermeister. But to make it popular, what he did was He created the Jägerbomb and got like Jägerettes, the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids' throats, and he made it the party drink. So Jäger becomes this like big drink. He's successful. Now he's in his 70s and he's like, all right, I'm going to start a new one. I want to start a vodka company. And he basically says, I'm going to do two things differently. First, he goes, we need to source the vodka. And they go, great, we're on our next flight out to Moscow. And he goes, no, no, no, we're not doing Russian vodka. They go, what do you mean? All vodka? Like, that's where vodka comes from. He goes, go to France and find me vodka. They go, there's no vodka in France. He goes, go to France and find me vodka, because if I told you this is French vodka, it just makes that dirty Russian vodka look like crap. And so they're like, but what if it's not better? He goes, I said it's French vodka. That means it's better. And so he sends one group there, and he tells the other group, he goes, go to the bar right now. I buy the most expensive vodka that there is. Bring all the bottles here. And they bring all the bottles and he's basically like, he lines them all up and he goes, cool, whatever the time, what's the most expensive vodka? It was like Absolut at the time. He's like, cool. Uh, we're going to be 30% more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is. And, um, what, that's their bottle. Okay. It's this fat bottle. We're going to be a tall bottle. And then he got the, he commissioned somebody to make it and they did the frosted glass and he's like, that's it. That looks expensive as hell. And he created Grey Goose off of this very simple concept. It was like either Italian or French vodka put in this expensive, tall, frosted glass bottle. So tall it wouldn't even fit on the shelves. So you had to put it on the top shelf because if you put it on the middle shelf, it wouldn't fit. It was too tall. So it had to become top shelf, like vodka by, by, by default because it was so tall. Isn't that amazing?
Hilarious. That, that's so funny.
It's interesting because it's basically like a commodity. Like, it's all, it's all pretty much the same. It's hard for people to distinguish. Uh, I have a friend who started a vodka brand, um, and the bottle cost more than the vodka. Yeah, exactly. And it was like a premium brand, dude.
It seems like a— that seems like, um, like a horrible business to be in. It seems like really challenging.
Alcohol in particular is tough because of the regulatory environment. It's different state by state what you can sell and you have to get licensed and all this stuff. It is challenging.
Nice. Um, do you want to do another one?
Yeah. What else?
Yeah.
What else are you excited about, Shil, that you think somebody could go do?
I think something I want in my life is like a school for AI tools. So like maybe you could franchise it. Um, but for me, like right now I would pay a few hundred bucks. To go to a class like half a day just to become a better photographer, iPhone photographer, and like show me how to edit things and like make fun, funny things on the internet, memes or whatever. Same thing for video. And I think the same is true for many other products that you can use like AI or software for. So it's like a software school, um, in person.
Cool. One of that's just for you, like just other two other tools that are useful in your life.
Exactly.
Yeah. Is for adults or for kids?
It can be for adults. I think start with adults and then also kids.
Sean, he was telling me before this, he was like, you know, I'm trying to hire this person to teach me how to do like video editing and use AI. And I was like, two things. One, Sean actually hired an AI like tutor, which is actually pretty amazing. And then also you went on this big rant a month ago. It's probably the greatest. In terms of like ikigai, of like what the world wants, what Sean's good at, what he's passionate about, and like what the world's willing to pay for, like him creating like, you know, another Full Sail University. It's quite aligned.
Oh yeah. I had this idea. Well, first I did an AI tutor, mostly just because I've realized that coaches are just an absolute life hack. Once you get some money, it's like a luxury that doesn't actually cost that much., but adds a lot of value to your life. And so now anytime I want, want to do something, my first stop is who's a coach I can hire that will speed up my learning curve, be a forcing function because they're gonna show up and it's gonna like force me to actually stick to this hobby.
Um, and yeah, get better faster. How do you find them?
Uh, with this I just tweeted it out and I was like, hey, who could, I'm, I'm willing to pay $500 an hour for somebody who's gonna I was like, you learn all the new stuff that's going on in AI, and then I want to sit with you for 90 minutes every Wednesday, and I want you to tell me what's going on, but also like, like teach, like, like I'm hands on keyboard struggling trying to do the thing because that way I'll like actually learn how to do it. And it's been kind of amazing to be honest.
You're still doing it?
We're still doing it. It kind of shifted a little bit. Like other friends wanted to join. So I invited a couple other friends, and so it's kind of a group thing now. And, um, yeah, it's pretty amazing. So, uh, so that's, that's been great on the AI side. But just in general, I'm a big, like, I, I'm, it's like, it's like comical now how, how my first answer to everything is to get a coach. And, um, but whatever, I'm going to keep doing it till it doesn't work. And it's, it's worked at everything.
Dude, we hired a, we hired an organizational coach to to come and teach us how to like organize a closet. Like, I'm so on board with that.
Oh my God. We pay so much to our organizer. We don't have a coach. We just have an organizer who comes in and she is doing so well. She re— she, last time she was here, which was like 2 weeks ago, which is 'cause she's here all the time organizing something. Um, she was like, oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me. I'm gonna go organize their new place in Switzerland. So she's like got this thing going where like It's an incredible business. I mean, it's not like a huge business, but she's, she's got people under her and stuff now.
Is it just like magic? Like, is your house just like incredible now?
I think it's fine. My wife loves it. Wow.
I have a friend that just bought a home. They moved in. It's a huge house, like 8,000 square feet. They paid this service $25,000 to be there before, like, to map out where everything— like, it was like, you know, like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out, to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with a strategy. It was $25 grand.
Uh, that's a lot.
It's, it's a lot.
I think we paid, I don't remember. I don't know how much we paid total because I don't see it because if I saw it, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember the kitchen was a couple thousand dollars.
Do you, do you have the like Indian, uh, frugality gene? Oh, big time. Okay. You're not a good spender.
I'm not a good spender and it's, Like my lifestyle hasn't changed that much. Net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade and my, my lifestyle hasn't changed. I'm always looking for a deal. Like anything I buy, I'm going to Slickdeals first. I've like got the credit card points thing down. Like all this stuff that shouldn't— I shouldn't be doing is like stupid optimization. But for me it's kind of a game and I love it.
What are the— give us a quick credit card tip. What do you— what's your credit card stack? Uh, 'cause I don't wanna do the research, but I might just piggyback off you.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. So, um, I use the US Bank Smartly card. It's 4% on everything. And if you just want a single card, that's the card to go off of.
US Bank Smartly.
That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's 4% on everything. By the way, I use it on my taxes.
So wait, what?
Use a Facebook ad spend. Yeah, exactly.
Is there like a limit or is it unlimited?
Just your credit limit. Um, wow. And now it's called US Bank Smartly and you have to have, you have to have $100,000 with US Bank. But what I did is I just have a brokerage account with a single stock and that's my $100,000 at US Bank. It's a great deal. Like, they, they're losing money on me for sure.
Dude, on one hand I'm like, this is sick, I gotta do this. And then on the other hand I'm like, I just like, you know, I don't know, setting it up.
Dude, 4% is pretty legit. I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.6% from Bank of America.
Yeah.
And, uh, so now you're just shitting on that. This is, this is way better.
This way better. This way. But I also, you also tweet all types of stuff. Like the other day you're like, does Robinhood give like 4%? Interesting.
So Robinhood, Robinhood has a card that gives 3% cash back on everything. And then right now they have a promo where it's like 4% or 5%. It was 5% if you put $25,000 into a Robinhood brokerage.
Dude, it's kind of actually interesting because if you are a really big company or you're spending a lot, couldn't the difference between 0% and 4% like have a meaningful impact on your margin?
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you're buying Facebook ads for for, like, could be really massive for you. Yeah. But for me, even just my taxes, getting 2% back on my taxes is, you know, many thousands of dollars. Pretty sweet. That's crazy. It's like free money.
I know a guy who, um, well, I, I could say it actually. His name's, um, David Hauser. He did a podcast, so, uh, is public, but he sold his company Grasshopper for, I think, $125 million. And he, he's like, you know, famously, he's, he's a friend of mine. He's like famously frugal and like, you, you know, whatever. And he was like, convinced American Express to let him pay his tax bill, which on a $100 million sale, I don't know what that would be, $36 to $40 million or something. And he was like, I now have unlimited, basically like unlimited flying, like for the next, he's like, for the next like 30 years, I ball out on, on flying and I don't have to pay for a thing. Uh, and, and he paid with his, you know, $40 million tax bill on Amex.
The one thing, so, um, speaking of miles, so like one thing I don't want to do is accumulate a lot of miles. I already have more miles than I need. And like, people are like, oh, well you're getting 4%, but I'm actually getting 5% because I get miles and miles are worth 2.3 cents to me because, but then I look into it and they're like, how is it worth that much to you? And you're, you're like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight, but that's not the flight I want to take. Just give me cash back and I'll, I'll, I'll buy my own shit.
Right. Also, don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate? Plus you don't actually use all your miles. So even exactly in theory, every point is worth X. You're never going to use 100% of your points. So you have to discount back off that.
Exactly. So for me, cash back is king.
Dude, I know a guy in Hampton, by the way, who had, who is a 2-person company and he spends $10 million a year on Facebook ads or something. And he's like, I got all these miles. And so I just, I was like, hey, book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money. And I got, you know, I bought 4 first class tickets to Europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it. It was awesome. Significant savings for me.
Do you have any other good, uh, financial wins or hacks? So you got the 4% cashback card. Is there anything else that like is a needle mover?
Actually, I've started using Robinhood for a lot of stuff. So Robinhood had this thing where, and they, they continue to have it where, um, that's dangerous. I don't think it's dangerous. Robinhood's a big company. They're, they're making lots of money. I'm, I'm, I'm a Robinhood bull. And they had this thing where you could move your assets over and they would match 1%. So it's pretty amazing if you have, let's say, $10 million of assets in stocks somewhere, you move it over, you get $100,000 free money.
How long does it have to stay there?
I think it's 2 years, but I've been very happy with the service. And, and I, I, I just did the transfer, ACAT transfer from Schwab. Schwab called me like red alert, and they were like, we'll give you $15,000 right now in your account. You don't have to do anything. You just— we're just going to give you $15,000. You just don't move your money. And I was like, yeah, but I'm getting a lot more from, from, uh, Robinhood. So I, I moved it, and I've been very happy. And then I have a lot of other— I now use other products on them and they have a great margin rate. It's like 5%. It's great.
Do you— are you like a stock picker? What do you do with your personal portfolio? Are you just like boring index funds? Do you do anything interesting?
I want to not be a stock picker. I want to be boring index funds. But inevitably, like, I get excited about an idea and I invest in it and it's been very good for me. I've, I've like been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly.
What was your big best pick?
I bought, uh, like my biggest position was NVIDIA in 2017.
No shit.
And what was that based on? What was the idea there?
It was, um, I, I did a lot of research, got excited, and I thought there were two theses. Like I actually, it was more based on crypto than it was AI. And I was wrong. Like we, we moved away from GPUs and moved into ASICs for crypto, but it ended up being right anyway.
And that's awesome. So that was in 2017. The stock was raised about 30, 30-something X from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like it's a 30x, 150 today. Back then it was $5. 30x is wild. Did you keep it in the whole time?
It was— yeah, I've kept it the whole time. I haven't actually bought any more or sold any. So yeah, I have. And it was, it was like my biggest position in 2017.
And you're, you're basically like a fintech expert, right? Your fund is fintech. You've invested in a bunch of fintech things. What's your position on crypto? Are you like, yes. So are you a big Bitcoin bull? Do you believe in all the altcoins? Like, what's your, where do you stand? Cause I haven't heard you talk about it much.
Yeah. I don't talk about that much. I, um, Bitcoin is so actually looking at my assets, it's probably Bitcoin number one, Nvidia number two, and then like the house that I live in number three.
No way.
Really?
Yeah. And so, uh, Say more. Well, what got you into Bitcoin or crypto at the beginning? And is it just Bitcoin or do you also believe in ETH and Solana and other things?
I only have Bitcoin and ETH. I have some of the others, but like not a meaningful amount. I actually have a tweet where I was like anti-Bitcoin and Bitcoin was like $0.60 or something. I was like, this is never going to work. Here's why. Governments are never going to allow it, blah, blah, blah. And then I finally bought in around $300. And the idea was I still like what people believed then, what people told me was like, it's going to be a fast and efficient way to move money. And that isn't what happened at all. Right. And so in some ways I was right. It doesn't, it doesn't matter that I was right. I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier. And I think as a store of value, like the more successful it gets, the more successful it's going to get. Right. And so that's it. And more and more people are putting money in. So I, I've Put money in. Now, for me personally, for my— for me personally, that makes sense. For my fund, I want to invest in things that like actual people are going to be able to use and like have real impact on the world. And I haven't found that many use cases. We have made a couple investments in stablecoins. I think there's something there.
I was going to ask you a nerdy question. There's a, uh, a lot of people are paying attention to stablecoins right now.
Uh, I see what Fartcoin is.
That's an unstable coin for sure. Butthole. People who don't know, a stablecoin is basically, it's a digital token. So it has the benefits of being like able to be transferred online easily and programmable, things like that. But it's just pegged to the dollar. So for, you put a dollar in a bank account and then one digital dollar is created. And that's the idea is that in order for the digital dollar to be created, an actual US dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere. And so there's companies like Circle and others, Tether, who are supposedly doing this. And I guess it's kind of like a lot of people believe it's like stablecoins is taking off now. There's some charts. I think the All In podcast has been talking about this recently. A stablecoin— didn't the stablecoin business get bought or a tech business that was bought for over a billion by Stripe? Billion dollars by Stripe. So what's— is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air?
I think there's something real here. I think like they're transferring money internationally is challenging and there's something called SWIFT, which is how banks do it. It's basically like a messaging protocol. Um, I, I think stablecoins can make things easier. I think still at the end of the day, I think people, people, people are overhyping stablecoins because at the end of the day, you need an on-ramp and an off-ramp to get money. And they aren't that. Like I, I had this issue, I had a wedding in India and, um, I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash. There was a lot of cash, and I, I was like, hey, I tweeted it, can somebody help me get a lot of cash in Mexico? And the reality is there's a reason why it was so difficult, and the reason is like money laundering. And actually, also, even what I was doing was illegal because— or what, what my vendors were doing, they wanted cash because they don't want to pay taxes. And so the reason it's hard is because the government doesn't want you to Do you want to skirt taxes? And I had this convoluted thing, actually, you guys might appreciate. I convinced my bank to let me— normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day. I convinced my bank Schwab to let me do $4,000 per account per day. And I opened 6 bank accounts at Schwab and I was able to go to an ATM and withdraw $4,000 of cash per account per day. And I was there for the week prior. That basically paid for a lot of my wedding. Dude, do you know what the takeaway from this, by the way, is?
It's like, that's the second time that you've said something where you've went to like a major institution and negotiated.
Yeah.
Like when I hear about like you, you went to Schwab, I'm like, is Schwab a person that you can go to? Like, I don't understand. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like getting like Google AdWords help or it's like, it's like if I had a Gmail issue, it's like just, hey Google. Yeah. Yeah. I need you to fix this. Like I didn't even realize that you could call Schwab or call Bank of America and like, yeah, I know you guys don't offer this, but, but, uh, you know, you can, you got to.
Yeah, I think if you explain your situation to them, some— actually, one thing I do is like, I know pretty quickly if I've got a good agent or a bad agent. And then if I have a bad agent, I hang up and call again.
Like, what's—
you know, somebody who's like going— like, I just told them my story, like told them what I needed, and, and then like somebody walked me through the process and I got it done. And so I think you could do that all the time. And then speaking of negotiation or like talking through something, I think something a lot of people should do is realize like You can negotiate at Macy's. Like I, I did this with my wife. My wife, um, she bought a wedding dress, uh, a post-wedding dress at Macy's. Like it was for, for one of our weddings. And we were, we were at Macy's and I was like, I want to teach you to negotiate. I want you to get a better deal on this dress. It was like, I don't know, $400 dress or something. And I was like, can you get a better deal? And she did. She got like 20% off just by asking at Macy's. For like a person at Macy's and she saved like $100 or something.
Do you ever do that?
Yeah. I mean, I'll do things like, like I'll be like, hey, um, like I don't, I won't know if they had a sale recently, but I'll be like, I think you had a sale recently.
Like, can you see? Yeah.
Like you, you had like a, you know, like for example, like I went and got something at Brooks Brothers the other day and I know that one time a year they do like a 40% off sale and I went like 3 months after that sale. But I was just like, hey, can you, can you match that? And if you— I always find I always prefer to go to women, like the workers who are women. I have way more success because they're just like easier to like get along with and like, you know, you like do like a little fake flirt, but that works like way better for me is, is with retail, just like talking to a woman and being like, hey, how are you doing today? You know, look, I know this is a little obnoxious, but can I get that sale discount or what?
Yeah. My buddy Dan, they have like, they have a bunch of QR codes or like barcodes and they just scan a QR code or barcode and it's like, oh, here's 20% off. And like, all you do is ask.
My buddy Dan, his mom was like the master at this. If like when we were in college, we would go try to like, you know, buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment. And she would just, while we're checking out, she'd be like, and give the boys a discount. Give these college boys, give these boys a discount. And then they would be like, what? Uh, for what?
And then she's like, give them a discount.
Yeah, she would just be like, come on, give the boys a discount. They need it. And then she would just tell them, like, give the boys a discount. And sure enough, 20, 30, 40% off would just happen like that. And I would never even think to do it, but she would just say it like, like it's a done deal. Like, oh, it's happening. Not like, do you think it'd be possible? Is there any way? We would really appreciate it. She was just like, oh, and then throw that in. Put the discount on top of it. Whatever you got, like, give, give the boys a discount.
She's just like alphas, like every clerk.
Yeah, exactly.
I think it's a good— I think it's something like I want my kids to learn. Like if I have kids in the future, hopefully I will. Um, like I want them to learn these sorts of things. And it's like, it's also like somebody posted like, what job do you wish you had? I wish I had a sales job growing up. And like the people that are selling you like Dead Sea cosmetics or something, like they're just coming up to you or like cell phone accessories. They're like, hey, what phone do you have? And then they try to sell you something. Um, I feel like those are really useful things that I wish, I wish I did.
Dude, the Dead Sea guy at the mall. Oh my God. Unbelievable skill set. Just an incredible skill set.
Is that a scent or a lotion?
I think it's like a body scrub.
Yeah. Got it.
And it's, it's gotta be like a 98% profit margin sort of business.
Yeah. Didn't your dad sell like door-to-door or something?
Yeah. My dad sold encyclopedias door-to-door when he just moved here from India. It's actually a great story. He like. He, um, he was very poor in India. He, to come to the United States, like he, he studied at IIT in India, great university. And then like to come to America, he needed to raise money. So he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over. And you had to have $300, uh, to stay in America, like on your passport, they stamped that he had $300. He came with exactly $300 in his pocket. And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back. And he had the stipend as a master's student and then a PhD student. And he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman. Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time. He was in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama door to door selling encyclopedias. And he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country.
Um, did he really?
And like, yeah, he really did. And he, he had—
you asked him about it? Like, what was the secret? What was the pitch?
I think it was just like working day and night, I think was the pitch. And, um, crazy enough. So he, he made enough money. To buy an apartment in, like, a condo in India, like a one-bedroom condo in India. And that's still the condo that, like, my uncle lived in. And still, like, we still go and stay in that condo that my dad bought with his earnings from working as an encyclopedia salesman.
Dude, do you actually have a bunch of good tweets about your dad? Like, I feel like I kind of know about him. Like, apparently did that video.
Did you see the video recently?
First of all, he quoted Robert Mugabe, who is like a dictator in Africa. America, like the dad, like at Sheila's wedding, he like gave a speech and he quoted Robert Mugabe, who I think was like the dictator of Zimbabwe. Like he must have been like—
it was about treating everyone well.
It was a good quote, but like he was clearly on like brainy quotes that he typed in, like quote on love. And like it was by like a killer dictator.
And my dad was like, Robert Mugabe, very, very famous for his quips. And I'm like, I think Robert Mugabe was famous for something else, but okay.
And then he's got this other video of his dad on a cruise. Like, he's like, we lost my dad, but we found him dancing or something like that. He's like dancing with this other couple.
And then, and then, so we went on a cruise, family cruise a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome. I, I was very skeptical of going on a cruise. We went with 8, 8 family members. It was, it was super awesome. But anyway, we, we go to this tasting menu restaurant. And my dad shows up with a pizza to the tasting menu restaurant, and then I filmed him. Like, the, the people, like, were, like, pretty mad at him.
Yeah, I saw that.
I loved it.
He, like, covered it with a napkin. He's like, oh yeah, no problem, no problem. And they're like, no sir, we can see it, it's still there.
He's treating it like a, like a baby. You, like, put something in front of their eyes and it doesn't— it just doesn't appear anymore. Exactly.
Exactly.
That's hilarious. Um, dude, thank you for doing this.
Well, this was fun hanging with you, as it always is. And I recommend, if you want to hear Shiel's story, go back and listen to the episode. I think it's episode 18. Um, I think it's called like the, you know, the guy who, who, you know, made millions on, uh, selling wacky domains. Um, because you told your story kind of like in order there, and it's a great, it's a great episode. I went, you know, for me to go back and re-listen to my voice, Like anybody knows, if you're listening to your own voice on a recording, that's painful. And so for the fact that I went through an hour episode this morning, that means the episode's pretty good.
And thank you for you guys made it so big.
Yeah, you were there. You were the cause.
And you got to give, uh, Sheila a follow on Twitter. You are a great follow. Like you just do the, like, it's just the small things in life. Like you just tweeted out, apparently, do you have a couch that's like a square?
Yeah, I've, it's a 9 foot by 9 foot couch. I love this thing. My wife hates it, by the way, but I love it.
You just tweeted out a photo of your couch and I'm just like, who on earth would buy this? And then I'm somehow convinced that it's the right decision.
Dude, I've always been curious. They go to the furniture stores and they have the pit. It looks like a pizza because it's like a 9-square thing. You have to like hop on like a small child and just like crawl around the couch because your feet aren't going to touch the ground. And you did. You bought it.
I love it. It's so fun when you have people over, but it's also modular, so you can turn it into other things.
Thanks for doing this, man. You're the best. We appreciate you. All right.
That's the pod.
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