5 Conversations that broke our frames this week

Not going to lie. Haven't heard a word since you said leverage to the tits. I've just been waiting for us to talk about that.

Quick break. It was like, you know, today I'm going to wear a turtleneck and I might try to say leverage to the tits. Like, you know, it's like getting a new haircut, you know, like affirmations. Yeah, this is my—

I can pull this off.

Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs. You know what I mean?

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Sam, it's just me and you, no guests. This is nice. It's like a date night for us. The kids are out of the house.

Well, let's debrief. I have done a few things. Do you want to go like back and forth of the interesting people that we hung out with? I have got like 2 or 3. How many do you have?

Uh, yeah, I got 3 or 4, but I have a theme with mine. I don't know if yours would fit this, but the theme with mine is all people who are contrarians in some way. And what I mean by that is not like contrarian, like, you know, this like an annoying kind of contrarian, not like—

like if you call yourself a contrarian, it's like you're not contrarian, right?

Correct. Exactly. They wouldn't say this about themselves. I would say it about them, which is what makes it kosher. The way I would say it is they're all independent thinkers, meaning when I hear the stories of what they're doing, I don't even want to ask about the thing. It's like, how did you even think of doing that thing? You know what I mean? It's like, how— all right, before you tell me all the details, how did you even get into that situation? Why were you even looking there? Why were you even deciding to do that?

Okay, I can, I can, I can, uh, fit within that framework.

Okay, yeah, I'll go first. So I hosted this dinner in San Francisco and, um, invited maybe, I don't know, 15, 20 people to this thing.

You did?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know, your boy's growing up, friends and hosting things.

So in the city, you drove to the city? You did?

I drove to the city. Yes, this is true, true facts. Um,. And so we go there and there's a guy there who, um, I'm friends with called, his name's Justin, Justin Koldbeck. And Justin is a tremendous investor. He was an investor early on in like Grubhub, Snapchat, Stitch Fix, like Boom, like just like a bunch of companies that have done really well. So let me tell you the story. So I, I was talking to him about, um, some of his big win investments. So I'll tell you a quick one. So there was a Grubhub one. I was like, how'd you get into Grubhub? He's like, oh, Grubhub was a, He's like, here's a funny story. Like, they were doing well, but nobody knew them. And I don't think they had raised much money yet. And I tried to get a hold of them. I cold emailed them. I cold called them. I called the office, couldn't get a hold of them. So he's like, so I just flew to Chicago. I just hung out in the lobby till I bumped into the guys. And I was like, hey guys, I'm just really a believer in this thing. Sorry to bother you, but I just really believe in this thing. Ends up doing that deal.

So, okay. A classic, classic meet cute.

And you hung out with him and he told you that story at dinner?

Yeah.

Did you have any other interesting people at your dinner that you want to talk about or no?

Uh, yeah, there's a couple guys. So there's one guy, Will, who's coming on the podcast. Will O'Brien. He's this Irish guy. And he's coming on the podcast because he had this, uh, sentence that caught my attention. He goes, the ocean is the ocean is the next space. Ocean is the next space? What are you talking about? He goes, well, you know how recently all these, you know, there's a bunch of investment now in space tech. So SpaceX, obviously first, but then After that, there have been, uh, more and more companies that have been getting funded, Varda and others, that are all about rockets and satellites and getting to space, mining asteroids, mining minerals, whatever it is. And he goes, the ocean is the next space. Like, the ocean is this other vast, mostly unexplored, mostly untouched by tech space. And he's building an ocean tech company, and he told me about 4 or 5 other ocean tech companies. And it was a finger to the lips, you got to come on the podcast and talk about them there. Don't, don't, don't waste this at a dinner. Okay.

That's actually a really interesting concept because right now space is hot. Robots, so hot right now, having a moment. Is oceans the new it girl?

I'm looking for it, bro. I'm looking for it. I'm like, what's going to be hot?

Is it like, is she like the hot girl who just has like glasses on for some reason? She's still the nerd. And then someone's going to like take her glasses off and be like, Makeover dud. You're the girl.

The rom-com where all you had to do is take her hair out of the ponytail and take off the glasses.

Yeah. You're now beautiful. Is that the— is that the ocean right there?

Yeah. Who is that? That's Callie.

No.

She shows up at prom.

Who's the new girl?

It's not a new girl.

Imagine them giving their pitch to their LPs or to their investors.

Like, you know, wiping off the glasses.

Yeah. It's just like, Ladies and gentlemen, have you seen She's All That?

Yeah.

How about 10 Things I Hate About You? Yeah. Then, my friend, let us introduce you to our new ocean startup. You get it. Exactly.

I thought that was great because he's just thinking a lot and living in a space that I— it's like, you know, sort of right under your nose, but you never really think about.

That's pretty cool. All right. You want me to tell you about someone I hung out with?

Yeah, give me one.

All right. So we had this guy on the MoneyWise podcast like a month or something ago. And he's like in his 60s. His name's Steve Howden. He's a billionaire. He, I had a great time talking to him on the podcast and like on the podcast he was talking about like, you know, making money and all that traditional career shit.

But he's a billionaire from what, by the way?

not going to lie, haven't heard a word since you said leverage to the tits. I've just been waiting for us to talk about that. So we take a quick, quick break, quick HubSpot ad break, real quick. We discuss that. I kind of liked it.

Well done. Yeah, I'm trying it on.

Too much, or was it okay?

I'm trying it on. Just, it was like, you know, today I'm going to wear a turtleneck and I might try to say leverage to the tits. Like, you know, it's like getting a new haircut, you know, learning affirmations. Yeah, this is my— I can pull this off. Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs, you know what I mean?

All right, so makes a bunch of money, oil and gas and land, got it. Okay, so you didn't just talk to him on the podcast, then you went and you did an absolutely normal human thing to do after the podcast. You invited yourself to his family reunion or something?

Well, after the pod, I was like, Could I come over? Like, can I come and just like hang out with you? Uh, and he was like, yes, absolutely you can. And so basically he lives in, uh, Dallas. He has this huge mansion. Uh, I know that because I look the way I look, a lot of people think that I know about like skiing. Um, but I don't, but he was like, I have a ski-in ski-out house, which I didn't even know what that meant. I've never skied in my life. And I had to like figure all this out, but we went to Utah at his huge mansion. It was a ski-in, ski-out thing, which if you do ski, that's like a fancy thing or whatever. And I learned a few things. The first thing that I learned, I had no idea, but his 3 daughters are famous. So his wa— or sorry, his wife and 2 daughters are famous. So his wife is, uh, Jen Houghton. She's got an Instagram called Turtle Creek Lane. I think she has 1.5 million subscribers and basically, or followers. And basically what she does is she decorates their home in like the most crazy over-the-top way. Like, so for example, for Christmas, like, it looks like a Christmas dollhouse, but that's like her real house. And so she got famous doing, um, doing that via Instagram and then brought in the other two daughters to do, you know, their shtick, which I actually don't know what their shtick is, but I know that a million people follow them because when I was around them, I was like, they're just living and people just like love watching them.

Were they just like snapping content constantly or what?

No, that's funny. They weren't. I mean, they did a bit, but it wasn't any different than anyone else who has like 1,000 followers. You know, or like, uh, it was not obnoxious. And, uh, they actually had mentioned that they worked with you on a company you invested in. And they were like, his company that he invested in, they did a great job of hooking us up. So you, they, they knew you.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. One of them. Uh, yeah, for sure. But I didn't know, maybe from their, I think they do a good job in their personal, the daughter's like personal content. It doesn't look like I'm the daughter of a billionaire type of thing. Right. It's like super relatable. It's fun. It's, you know, it's, it's easy to follow, easy to like.

So I didn't know that they were like these famous people. The second thing I didn't really know, I didn't know they were Mormon, but they weren't just Mormon. He was like King Mormon. Like he's on the board of BYU. And so I, I think I learned this the first morning when Sarah and I get up at 7 AM to go hang out and everyone, we're sitting around the kitchen and we're just kind of like patiently waiting for them to get the coffee ready.

And you're just vaping rudely in the kitchen.

Mom of 3. The mother economy. That's who you want to sell to.

Was it awkward being at their like family reunion or what was—

Dude, they were so— they were like, come on in.

And like, they— even more awkward. They're so nice also.

They were so nice. I just think these guys are nice all the time. And I asked them, I was like, why are you so nice? And I was like, why do you guys have so much fun? Like, they had like activities. Like, we went like, they're like, let's go in the cold plunge and then get into the hot tub. And then we're going to go do like— they had like activities planned that they all did as a family. I was like, what are you guys doing? And they were like, we just want fun to be the center of everything we do.

And It was just like amazing. This is like the opposite of like, you know, when you're a bad kid in school and they take you to like jail and they want to like shock value, like show you what your life could look like if you just keep going down this path.

Yeah. I just got like hugged really hard.

This is like the opposite. You're like, hey, you want to see what a really healthy family dynamic looks like? I'm going to take you there for a weekend immersion.

It was the healthiest family dynamic. I have never seen anything like this. And then they have a subreddit. There's a subreddit dedicated to making fun of them. And it's, have you ever seen this? So first of all, do you know why there's so many Mormon influencers? Basically Mormons are explicitly told you should journal, you know, journaling is a good way to reflect on life and it slows you down. That led to Mormon mommy bloggers, which they're like inherently kind of interesting because they're really into like, I think Mormons are told they need to prepare for the end of the world. Fucking awesome content, right? Like talking about like your packing system for like all your nuts and stuff. Like that's really good content. Parlay that into Instagram. And that is one of the reasons why there are so many freaking Mormon influencers. And I didn't know that, but, um, uh, they have, and so because of that, they have a whole subreddit. It's called like Turtle Creek Lane Snark or something like that. And every time that they would post something, people make fun of them for the silliest stuff. Like one time we were like in the house and like one of the kids was eating a piece of cheese and like. For some reason, a 2-year-old shouldn't have cheese. I don't know why, but that was a post that someone made fun of them. Or there was one time where Sarah, my wife, made it in the background of one of the photos and they're like, who's this person? As if she was like a new cast member. And they like were Googling her and like listing out her name. It was crazy. And I asked them, I was like, does this stuff bother you? And they just, it totally like, like they were like, no, like why? Like what they care about us is their business. It doesn't bother us at all. And so this family had the most positive outlook on life and it, it did wear off on me, to be honest. Like, you know, I'm not about to go and like become a Mormon or anything, but I want to hang out with them a whole lot more.

Right. This is wild, by the way. Didn't he get in like a helicopter accident like the next week or something?

The week after? Yeah, he, he, his, he on the podcast on MoneyWise, he talked about how much he loves flying helicopters. I don't know all the details, but like 3 days afterwards they were flying a helicopter. I think he was—

he's flying it himself.

He, in this particular, he does, but in this particular case, he was the passenger and they got in a wreck and it was not good. And he survived. He's going to be fine. But it was a, it was a bad, it was a bad wreck. Uh, and like, if you go to their Instagram, you'll see like all 10 of their family members, like surrounding him at the hospital. And so, yeah, he's going to have a, um, a lot of issues to deal with, but like, this was like the kindest, sweetest family I've ever been out, been around. Do you know Raleigh Williams? He came too. And it was like me and Raleigh Williams and then the Houghton family. And Raleigh Williams, his kid was amazing. She's 10 years old. And I was— she was the most articulate little girl I've ever talked to. I was like, how, how did you learn how to talk this good? And she was like, I, you know, for the church, they teach us how to do like a homily. That's what we call it in the Catholic Church. I don't know what the Mormons call it. We talk in front of like 500 people at church. And she was like, in doing that, I learned that I need to like and like told me like all like the principles to like speaking confidently. And I was like, you're the greatest person. I was like, I'm naming my next daughter Navy because of, because of you. But this freaking family was awesome. It was so— I felt honestly like I was in a reality TV show, but there's no drama. There was zero drama. It was like the happiest thing I've ever seen. And the husbands, by the way, are the managers of— so the husbands are the managers of the two daughters. They were like, one guy was like, yeah, I used to work at Amazon. I helped create, I think, Alexa or something like that. But then when I saw the potential for like this influencer stuff, I quit right away. And now we make— and they told me how much money, and it was just an astronomical amount of money. Yeah, it was crazy. So that was my weekend with a billionaire Mormon family, and it was awesome.

All right. Where can we go from here? This might feel like a letdown after that. Let's see. All right. I'm just going to give you 3 numbers to pick from. I have 3 people on this list. Give me— you want number 1, number 2, or number 3?

Number 1.

Moving for taxes, when someone tells me they do that, I think they're stupid. I think that's a really, that's a foolish thing to do. Do you agree or disagree?

There's a lot of people that do that.

I think it's foolish. Sorry, they're not stupid. I think that decision is foolish. Or rather, I don't agree with it.

That decision and actually several other decisions they make are probably also stupid.

But don't you agree? Like the point of like succeeding is to do what you want, not to have to live to Puerto Rico, move to Puerto Rico. If you want to live in Puerto Rico, then great, do it. Exactly. If taxes is the number one reason, I think that that is your— what's that phrase? You can't see the forest in the trees or some, something like that.

And why? What, like, Did that make you reflect on a decision that you've made or thinking that you did the right thing or the wrong thing, or how will you implement this? Because that like makes me— I don't regret it. I don't regret— I moved mostly because of fam, or only because of family. But I do wish I was—

Which is its own network, right? You like opted into your own, like, you know, your own Parr family, you know, network or whatever. You know, you opted into— you opted to like be more dense there. And have more connectivity there, which is going to be great for your family raising and all that. But you opted out of the tech network of San Francisco, let's say.

Which, by the way, if I could live anywhere, like if family weren't a thing, it would want— it would either be in SF or a suburb like 20 minutes away. But I would live there in a heartbeat. And what did it make you feel like?

Well, he kind of points out, he's like, you know, there's some things that you don't choose, like where you're born, right? Things like that., but then there's, after that, it's a lot of what you start to choose, um, to do. And even little things like, you know, language is a network. So, you know, if you're in China right now, like choosing to join the English network is actually like a, a really powerful decision you can make that's gonna like completely change the trajectory of your, of your life. Being able to do that, uh, if you start to look at things, English is not just a language, it's a network. It's a network of people who all can communicate with each other. Using certain syllables and words and vowels and phrases, right? Money is a network, right? So joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision because you picked, hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is going to be valuable network, right? So it just made me more aware of that. It made me, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco? Partly because James was like, yeah, one of the big mistakes I made early in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself. I kind of just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of network. He's like, it was great for creativity, because I was just in my bunker, just doing my thing. But it was terrible because he's like, you know, I turned down that lunch meeting with Travis when he was starting Uber. And I, you know, I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me because I just thought like, I'm going to, I'm going to be off in my own land, creating my own little castle over here. And he's like, again, fun for creativity and for learning, but a little bit foolish to the how extreme I was with that. Like, and so, you know, for me, for example, I'm, I moved 45 minutes out of San Francisco. That reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings that I could have in the network, in the network of people that I like to be around. Interesting, ambitious people.

Would you move closer then?

Well, I don't, I don't think I'll move closer because like the family networks out here and it's just better, like the school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here. But I'm like, yeah, I could definitely like drive to SF twice a month and have like, you know, host a dinner, do a couple of live podcasts with people there. That'll be great. And like, that's not that much of an effort, but just to stay, just to keep one almost like a, in the diagram, right? One line connected to the white-hot center of the network.

Yeah. And I mean, you live near BART, right?

I do. But BART, BART's a network I don't want to be a part of.

You're opting out of that one.

Yeah, I'm opting out of that one.

All right. I have another person. So basically, I don't speak at conferences unless my wife wants to come with me. If Neville wants to join and do it with me, and if Nick Gray will attend. Those, those 3 things have to happen. You know, I need my entourage.

All 3 or one of the 3?

All 3. All 3 have to happen. All 3 have to happen.

That's your, like, I only eat green Skittles. That's your rider?

That's my rider. Is Sarah's got to— because the reason I, I try— I don't, I don't like traveling, but I like to travel if it's for a conference because I love going somewhere and the first 2 days are conferences. The next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's going to tell you cool shit to do. And also I just like doing stuff with my friends. Uh, and so I went and spoke at this thing called the Newsletter Conference, which was pretty wild because like 15 of my ex-employees were speakers and are all like, many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing, uh, newsletter stuff. And that like made me feel proud. But I met James Altucher. You know who James Altucher is?

Yeah, he's been on the podcast. He's, uh, what is his, like, he's an author? Like what was his like title in life?

Zero to One.

Zero to One. He said there's like a graph where it's like a bar chart or something like that, where it's like extreme success means that you're likely going to have extreme personality traits. And those extreme personality traits like come off as weird or undesirable in many settings. You know, you could be like Elon, which means you're going to be kind of mean sometimes. You could be like Albert Einstein, which means you're like forgetful all the time and like wear two different socks. Or whatever, like he like has these examples. James is that guy. He very much has the like brilliant but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe to him. And it was just wild seeing him just have normal conversations because his opinion and the way he looked at things was 100% fresh and different from how I looked at the most like normal things. For example, when he said he didn't leave his house, I was like, That's horrible. He's like, he was shocked that I was criticizing him and which is pretty funny because, uh, you know, he should live his life and be happy. And that made him happy. And it was, it was like, or in the green room, he was playing chess the whole time with Steph Smith, who was also there. I was like, you guys know each other? And they're like, well, we've never actually met, but we play chess like constantly together online. And he meets a lot of his friends playing chess online. And there was just so many little tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me. And by the way, if you saw, if you know Agora, you know, they're famous for these like long-form sales pages and like incredibly aggressive advertising. Do you remember in like 2020 or 2019, James's face was everywhere?

Yeah.

He was like, I hate that. I hated it. I hated it. I hate our landing pages. I hate how long they are. I hate how they look too aggressive. And he was like, I tried to write differently and like make my own landing pages, none of them could ever convert nearly as good as like the crazy shit that they would write.

So did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing?

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Or maybe the— yes. And also I think the answer is, is, and is still.

And is still. Okay. Gotcha. All right. I like that one, James. I have another one that's less weird, but more, um, side-questy. So Shil, Shil Manat, who came on the podcast, uh, recently—

you can see his episode, the numbers crushed.

Yeah, he did, he did, he did really well. We, um, so he was at the dinner too, and Shil tells these stories and you're just kind of like, if you just listen to the stories, you're like, wow, this guy is fascinating. You would never know his day job because Shil is an epic side-quester. So his day job is he's a VC. He invests in fintech companies. That's his job. And there's a lot of that. The weird thing is that if you listen to him, he's like, oh yeah, I, um, I'm taking like, like courses or like whatever. I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now so I can access all these travel discounts. And he's been doing that. He's like, yeah, I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position, uh, for like being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks. He's like, Basically like your friend who's like really good with credit card points, but for everything, including credit card points, by the way, I think on the podcast he gave us like a pretty good credit card, uh, point tip, but he just has like all these epic side quests he's gone down, um, over and over again. He's like, yeah, I got married in the metaverse and like Taco Bell sponsored it. Oh, and hey, guess what else I did? You know, I started this auction company to go and buy and sell like the domain endings, like .app and .photography. Like that was his business. It's like, these aren't even normal, even his businesses aren't normal businesses. They're just weird side quests that made money.

I think his side— is Thistle his? Is that it?

I think it was like 100 million plus. Yeah.

Over 100, 100 million plus in revenue. And I was like, wow, this guy is just always on SideQuest. So for example, he was talking about, he's like, um, he's like, oh yeah. Uh, MrBeast posted this video about like, I, I'm on this abandoned 'Island' or whatever, like this, this abandoned island. I'm the only one here and there's nothing here, blah blah blah. And then she was like, hold on, I've been to that island, but without the video. Like, and he's like, no wait, that's not abandoned. There's like a— there's a bar like 3 minutes away from where he is, and there's this motel. So he tweeted about this, and then Jimmy calls him and is like, hey man, like, what are you talking about? Like, that is an abandoned island. He's like, no, it's not, it's 3 minutes away from a bar. Like, he's like, no, technically it's abandoned if you look at XYZ. And I was like, this guy just constantly gets himself into situations.

Jimmy called him because Jimmy like felt his integrity was under attack.

Yeah. And he was like, did you give Jimmy my number? I was like, no, I didn't even, I didn't even know this happened.

And, and Shield didn't back down. He was like, no, it's not, it's not an abandoned island. Or were they both right?

He's like, where are you? Worf, he's like, look at it, 3 minutes away. There's a place, there's a pub. It's like, it's not abandoned. And I think technically maybe there was something where it's like the the, like, the border, or like, I don't know, I don't know what this— I didn't get into the details. Obviously, I don't give a shit. Uh, but I just thought it was amazing that there's people that just do things for their own amusement. And I'll bring this home with a little TikTok I saw. And it was— the TikTok was— there's like this TikTok had gone viral, and I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people are similarly really attracted to people who just do, do shit for their own amusement and really for no other reason. So the TikTok that went viral was like I forgot the name of the dance, but it was basically like, shout out to my boy Willie for, um, spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance. And I guess there's like some dance and there's like this— he's like this awkward looking white guy and there's like two Black friends trying to show him how to do this dance. And it's just like everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he's just practicing this dance just to like see if he can learn it in a weekend. And like he starts off really bad and by the end he's actually like pretty good at the end of the weekend. And then they cut to the to the wedding and he's doing the same dance just for fun on the— on his own on the side of the dance floor. Like, not part of a performance, just like, just doing his thing over there. And, um, I, I respect that. I think I respect that more than I respect, like, someone's achievements in life. Uh, I kind of respect people that, that value their own amusement as the highest order bit. And I think Sheil is an example of that. Like, the shit he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seeking. He's just amused by it, and therefore, like, follows it, and he ends up in these situations that at the end become really good stories. But I don't think that's why he's doing it.

I think, you know, we've done close to 700 of these episodes. Sheil would be in my top 10 of people who I admire most. Um, I think that Sheil— did you— like, people, I don't even know if we mentioned this, this one. Do you know that Sheil's in a Justin Bieber music video?

Of course he is. Why wouldn't he be in a Justin Bieber music video? How did that happen?

Like, I was watching from the, the outside. So I think the way it happened was during COVID Scheele created an online version of Bachelor, like The Bachelor.

Oh yeah, yeah, I watched this, it was great.

And wait, what were— what was it exactly? It was—

was this during COVID or Bachelor on Zoom? I think it was called the Zoom Bachelor or something like that. Yeah, Scheele, The Bachelor, and there's a bunch of women that would pop up and then he would like eliminate— he'd give out roses and eliminate them, and then he picked someone in the end, they went on a date or something.

And somehow I could be confusing all the stories, but somehow this, it, it was like, it was a hit. It was awesome. And then he, then there's a video of him where he's turned around like this and it looks like he's making out with someone like this.

In the video?

Yeah. So he, I think he is, I'm watching this all from outside. I think he posted that video and then he turns around and he smiles and he looks so happy. And that clip made it into a Justin Bieber music video. And if you go and watch the music video, his clip, Sheil's clip is the best clip.

Oh, I have it. I have it.

It's there. What was it called? Like, Love Yourself? Was it Love Yourself? And he's like, it looks like he's making out with someone. Play it. Play that clip. And like, watch that.

Oh my God, it's so funny. He turns around, he's got a huge mustache for some reason. And he's just cheesing.

Do you know another crazy thing about him, by the way? You know the podcast Startup on Gimlet Media? I think he created that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he did.

Him or he had his hands in it. Maybe we'll say that. Yeah. Uh, he just has had, he's had so many weird things happen to him.

Let me, let me tell you another one. Another person who I think is doing their own thing. So my buddy Furkan, who, you know, he's also been on the podcast. Uh, so Furkan and I, Tried to— we were co-founders. We tried to start a bunch of companies together for like, you know, 6 or 7 years. I know Furkan super well. One of the things about Furkan is that he is, um, he's just a grinder and it doesn't matter how like successful or wealthy he's gotten. I mean, his last company AppLovin is like a $100 billion company now. And it's like absurd. And, um, he was just a grinder.

Why is it taking off so much, by the way? Like AppLovin for years, it was sort of a joke because when you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards where they were trying to recruit engineers and the name AppLovin came out, right? Or we still associated it with McLovin. And it was like, is this, is this a, is this a real company? You know what I mean? And now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Yeah, exactly. So he, he's been so, so Furkan has been early into, into a bunch of like tech things, right? He's, he's basically like a hacker's hacker. So he was really into to crypto before crypto was cool. Like, I remember literally being at the office and he was like not paying attention because he was buying into the Ethereum ICO at like, you know, $0.17 or something like that. And I was like, Ethereum, like literally like dorkiest fucking name, never going to work. Uh, so I didn't buy because your boy's a genius and that's why I'm a podcaster now and he's a billionaire.

And so is Furkan a billionaire now or? I don't know. I don't know if he is or isn't, but something, he started a $100 billion company.

I don't know. He's, he's not like he's not like 3 zip codes away. Maybe he's 2. I don't know. He's getting close. So he got into crypto early on. And then when Web3 happened, remember when Web3 happened and everybody was like piling into Web3 and Furkan was building a company in that space. Literally, his company's called Third Web. And he was just really into the actual technology behind it. He's like, oh, I think I can make these tools easier to use for developers and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dude, one time he did a talk on, remember the Raspberry?

Raspberry Pi.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, he, he like one time spent like 45 minutes explaining to me all about it and he knew everything about it.

Yeah. Yeah. He knows everything about everything. So he's, um, and the second thing he got really into was VR. So he bought me an Oculus just cause he was like, I don't want to tell you about this and like, hope that you go try it out here. Here's the new Oculus headset. Go home and put this on. It's like, okay. Uh, that, that's, that's, that's the type of friend you need. And so I go home and I put it on, I'm blown away and I'm like, wow, this thing's getting really good. And then I think he bought me like another one when it got better, and then I started buying them, and I'm like, I'm paying attention to VR. But you know, I'm like every other lemming out there. It's like I pay attention when shit gets hot. And Furkan, the reason why Furkan is so great is because he doesn't pay attention when things get hot. He's like in the hardcore nerd bucket where he's like, I pay attention because it's interesting to me. I don't care if it's popular or not. I don't care if it's hot or not. I don't care if it's, if it's here, if it's here or not. I want to be on this train the whole time. And so he was telling me about his— so he's got this lab called Effink, and he was telling me first about Third Web, how it was growing and how it had real revenues now. I was like, oh, wow, that's great. Then he's telling me about VR. And like, Sam, how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now? Everybody who is interested in tech is interested in AI.

Where's your Oculus sitting right now?

Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room? I think it's back there. Yes.

Gone. Same. My, uh, I mean, like, I did, I did what everyone did. They got it. This is awesome. This is going to change the world.

It's going to change everything.

Uh, I don't know where the charger is. It's in my drawer somewhere.

Yeah, just go back to scrolling on my phone.

Yeah.

And, um, he didn't do that. He's like, he would tell me, like, we would hang out and he's like, I'm working in VR today. Once a week I go co-work in VR. I'm like, what? And, um, so guess what? His interest in VR, there's not, it's not popular right now. In fact, um, they went to a VR conference and this VR conference was like, you know, crickets basically.

And he sends, uh, is VR the new ocean?

To like all the young people listening who are like looking for a thing to do, I feel like that story is maybe a life-altering— that, that this is a very good premise and I'm, I'm on board with that, with this premise. I do think VR, like it's actually, and it's not, this isn't a secret. Mark Zuckerberg, who has a really good ratio of getting things right, has like said like, this is the thing. And also, do you know who also loves VR? Sheil. Sheil posts videos of his, or not, it's not VR, but the, the meta goggles. Yeah. Or what's it called? The Ray-Bans.

Ray-Bans.

Yeah. He loves those Ray-Bans and it's very clear how there's like, you know, that's all in the same ballpark of, of VR and how this can all work.

That was what I was gonna bring up next. So I love those too. I have 'em. I bought some for my sister just like for her birthday recently. And, um, I think that that is a great product. It's an actually like, do you have 'em by the way?

No, I'll go buy them right now. What do they do? Like what's the point?

So the first, the very first easy thing is they're basically AirPods. So people don't really realize this. At worst case scenario, you just bought a pair of AirPods that you're probably not going to lose. So the audio from the, like, the glasses, the, the part that goes behind your ear, it's not in your ear, but you can hear like music, podcasts, whatever, super easily. Um, so the audio is the AirPod type of feature is great. And then the camera, right? Like hands-free camera. If you have a kid, like, for kids, this thing is incredible because I wear them to like my daughter's like soccer games or whatever, and to like, you know, the moment passes so quickly with kids. And if you're fumbling, get out of your pockets, unlock Face ID. Nope, nope, type in my password, get the camera app open. It's over by then, right? Um, and you're now looking through your phone at life versus your glasses. That's already where you're already looking. It's on your head, it's on a swivel. All you do, literally, if something's going on or something's interesting, you just tap the thing and it starts recording. Um, and the video looks great, by the way. It's really, really good. So for If you're traveling, if you're out and about, if you've got kids, if you're at a sports thing, if you're at a concert, this thing is amazing. And so awesome to me. These are the, these are the future. I think Meta knows this. They're like investing in it very heavily. I think it's interesting because it's kind of uncontested right now. Like maybe Apple will get in the game. Maybe if they still have like the juice to do it. Snapchat seems to have fallen out. Um, the famous, like, I forgot what the thing was called, Magic Leap. Those guys died or are dying and Humane Pin died, right? Like all that stuff is this kind of dead. And I think Facebook has this sort of uncontested right now. And, um, the thing I was going to say though is I remember when I was in San Francisco, this company called Leap Motion got bought. Do you remember Leap Motion?

Yes. Uh, did they, did that become a video game or like a part of a video game?

They got bought by Facebook and what they were doing was they were, they were like, it was like this thing you wore on your wrist and then you could just move your hands and do like hand gestures to control a computer essentially. They never really found product market fit. 'Cause guess what? A lot of, not a lot of people wanna sit in front of their desktop and like hand gesture like the Minority Report, like replacing the mouse and keyboard wasn't like super sick, I guess.

Yeah. But it's pretty sweet if you have some physical disability, which, I mean, there's a lot of like amazing applications I would imagine.

Um, maybe, but you still gotta use your hand, your arm, right? So it's like, you know, same thing as like, I guess a mouse really. But the, the, the team that was working on it was like cutting edge. At this kind of like gesture control. And guess what? Like being the best team in the world at gesture control, or another example of this was, they got bought for, I think, $100 million plus. Another company that got bought for $100 million plus, uh, that never hit product market fit was the company that was working on, um, face masks. So before, remember when Snapchat came out with those face filters and it was super hot, like the dog face filter?

Bitmoji?

There was, um, I'm reading this book called Digital Gold. It's about the, have you, you know that it's a, that book, it's about Bitcoin and the founding and like the early community and things like that.

I don't think I've read that one.

It's great. There's not actually that many books written about like the early characters, which is why I wanted to read it because we had Nick Bilton on and we did American Kingpin about Silk Road. I was like, this is— these stories are really fun. And now like I know of a lot of the early characters of Bitcoin and like them talking about going to their first conference and on the first conference there was like 50 people there and it was like a shitty restaurant and, and just like all these like stories. Of like, yeah, like this checks all the boxes of like early, like crowd of just nerds who are regarded as freaks and no one takes them seriously. And then one like legitimate financier is like, okay, there's something here. And then another one and then another one. And then like there's a controversy, but they overcome it. And then like, it's just like it fits all the stereotypes of these types of stories. And what you're describing is like that same thing. It's like a group of weirdos. You know, what did we say about I had some guy pitch me a company that I thought was really stupid, and now it's huge. It was like, uh, uh, this product is dumb. Oh my God, people are using this. They're dumb. Oh my God, everyone's using this. I'm dumb. You know what I mean? And like, it's like, that's like how you go through it. That's like the process of some of these things. And, uh, like when you're talking about these Meta glasses, you're talking about VR, you're talking about Ocean. I'm like, oh my God, there's like a story here, a story there. Like it's the same pattern over and over again. And it's a really fun pattern.

Speaking of crypto, I have 3 crypto things for you real quick. Number 1, James on the podcast tells a story about, uh, cause he wrote this blog post a long time ago. He tells it, he tells a story about how, um, his friend thought he was Satoshi. And the reason why is because—

how flattering.

I know, by the way, like, so what's up with my friends?

Like, who, me?

Not even a long shot.

You think I'm Satoshi? No, I could never.

What an honor though. Um, but the thing that he was saying was, uh, he wrote this blog post that I've— it's on his blog still. It's called One Currency to Rule Them All. And it was about one world currency, about creating a digital world currency. And he tells a story on the podcast about why he, why he was interested in that, how he's interested and what happened. So he was like, him, um, I forgot who it was. It was, it was him. It was Philip Rosedale who started Second Life. Which, by the way, like, still to this, you know, basically Second Life to this day is probably the best execution of a metaverse. Like, they had like millions and millions of players. They lived their lives in there. They formed relationships and marriages. They had like, they have their own currency in there.

Like, is it, is it its own thing still?

I don't know if Second Life has officially like died. I don't know if it's still going. I'm not sure. But like, at the time they had Linden Bucks or whatever, Linden Dollars, and it was like a whole thing. So him and Philip Rosedale were like interested in this. And then it was a, there's a famous VC, I'm forgetting the name now, but he tells a story about a famous VC and they used to meet once a week and they would talk about like, okay, how are we going to build this world currency? And they were like, here's what it needs to do. And like all the things that Bitcoin eventually did, they're like, it needs to have, um, it needs to have this, it needs to have this. And what they did was they went to the lobby conference, which if you know, is like this 100 to 150 person conference. And they—

you break out— the last year of the lobby conference, it was awesome. It was all internet OGs. It was so cool.

No way.

He's like, have you seen Bitcoin? He's like, yeah. He's like, that's you, right? He's like, no, it's not me. He's like, I thought it was you. If any, if it was either of the two of us, it'd be you. You're way more technical. He's like, no, it's not me. Who the hell is this? How cool is that?

That is awesome. That is one of the greatest stories I've heard. They, um, It's weird that multiple groups of people start working on the same thing independently at the same time, isn't it? And they had the same conclusion that it had to be an anonymous creator.

Yeah, exactly. And you know what the other crazy thing you saw, this Jack Dorsey, like, is Jack Dorsey—

dude, that was the stupidest thing, man. Like, there was some compelling evidence, but then what they did was they completely like spoiled the broth by putting in there, Jack loves wearing Japanese clothing. Like as like examples of why he is Satoshi. Do you know what I mean? It was ridiculous.

Spoiler, I didn't think that was that bad. What's wrong with that?

There was like multiple pieces of compelling— it's supposed to be compelling evidence that says like Jack wore a "Who is Satoshi?" t-shirt to the Olympics. Like it was just like ridiculous stuff. No, I thought it was ridiculous. You didn't think it was ridiculous?

First I did, because I was like, Jack Dorsey, no way. Uh, you know, and then there's this deck, right? Did you read the deck? There's an actual full slide deck about it.

There was a bunch of good points.

There was a bunch of good points about it. What I, things I didn't know, I did not know that Jack was like in those early cypherpunk communities back when he was like 15 years old or something like that. You know what I mean? Like he was actually in that, like whoever started this thing was likely in that really small community of about, I don't know, 1,500 people that were on those early mailing lists.

Well, he was.

And he was, I didn't know that. So that was kind of new information. I was like, okay, interesting. Um, other things that I didn't know. So there was like, um, there was like a lot of the timing things with when he was starting Twitter and when he was like, basically the timing of when Satoshi was active and then when Twitter took off and then when he stopped, when he left Twitter and he was like, I'm excited about new things.

And then all of a sudden that was like, he like tweeted, he like tweeted like, like, some, someone needs to create this thing or that thing. And it was like right when the Satoshi was creating that thing, like there was all these like weird coincidence in timeline. Exactly. But then there was other stuff where he was like, look at the code here. That sounds like Jack's favorite restaurant in San Francisco. Or Jack said he wants to be by the US Mint for his office, which Twitter was, therefore it, I just thought it was huge reaches.

There are huge reaches and I don't think it's true. Uh, but I thought, wow, this is a lot of stuff about Jack Dorsey that I didn't really realize. And like, you know, for example, um, you know, one of the, uh, I think the biggest reaches of the thing where they would look at like strings of the transaction IDs or whatever, and it'd be like, see, this says, um, D2MP, Dude in Two Mint Plaza. That was his address.

You're right.

Like, all right. I don't think D, just cause D2MP showed up in the middle of a string. Doesn't mean that, uh, that he's saying, you know, one dude SF, one D SF.

That's right.

You know, it's like those are the ones where it's like, okay, I don't think that that stuff is, uh, that stuff is true.

It's like trying to like figure out if Tupac's still alive. Like, did you hear what that— he said Suge shot me, like he said it in the song, you know what I mean?

But I would definitely go read this deck. The deck was very entertaining and it was presented in a very like serious way. And I just appreciate the seriousness that which somebody took, uh, took this, uh, this research. Um, by the way, that Two Man Plaza, that's where we were for the dinner. And so I was like, and it was the same day that the thing dropped. I was like, hey, this is, maybe I'm the creator.

Maybe you're Satoshi. That should be the takeaway.

That was my takeaway.

I've got one more thing for you. Um, go to chizos.com. So C-H-S-I-C-H, sorry, start over. chizos.com. All right. I spelled it all wrong and you still got there.

Is it chisos?

Is it Spanish? Chisos boots. Do you see the boots?

Incredible craftsmanship. I see cowboy boots.

Yeah. So, uh, I own a pair of these boots. I have no stake in this company, nothing. I just think it's cool. I, uh, and the, the founder is part of like, uh, I recently became friends with him, but he's part of my friend group in Austin. He was like friends with Nick and I met him once or twice through Nick.

Uh, his name's Will Roman and this company, uh, you bought a $1,000 pair of cowboy boots.

Yeah, this is really cool. By the way, great branding by this guy.

So like, dude, he has everything good.

But dude, look at his website. You, you started your story with This guy worked in tech, had an everyday job, wasn't perfect, quit his job, moved to Mexico for 3 years to learn the art of bootmaking. Guess what? Not on his website. I know, but 3 years of life, 3 years of marketing collateral that he's not using, right? Like that's 1,000 days of his life that he's not putting on the website. Like even if you, even if you click down the more tab, you're right. It's like more our story. You go to Mars. It's like true small business. Hi, I'm Will. I'm a hardworking guy, passionate about craftsmanship. Guess what? Everybody says that. Guess what everybody hasn't done? Moved to Mexico for 3 years and apprenticed in this boot factory.

I was like, right? I was like, Will, do you use Reddit? He goes, uh, I don't really know how to work it. I go, let me show you something. If you Google what's the most— if Google comfortable cowboy boot Reddit, the top post, someone asked that, and Chisos, the top line, it says this is the most comfortable boot I've ever worn. And there's 117 comments. Agreeing with that top post. And he is like, oh, that's awesome. He like saw that. I was like, are you insane, man? This is it.

You have it. So this guy doesn't have a TikTok, is that right?

I don't think so.

Does he not know that like every niche nostalgic profession is now like the coolest kid on TikTok?

Like if you plant like beets or something like that, if you have a beet farm, dude, there's like Victorian porn where it's like people like wearing like, you know, like old dow dresses. Like, you know what I mean?

Like there's like, The weirder, the better, and the more physical real world, the better. Go look at Epic Gardening, right? Like if he wants to do this, like go, go teach people about this. Go show them the process, show them how the factory looks like, show them cutting a boot in half. Like stuff like that I think would be, would be just fire on, on TikTok.

And I, I only brought it up because I, the story was amazing. I also want to go on record as like, this might be like another, like of our, like, uh, feather in the cap moment where we called it moment because I do love their boots. It's so good. And I love meeting people who 80% of the work is done. This other part, a lot of people can help you and get it done.

And I don't know, maybe not that 80% of the work is done because like actually 80% of the work is the marketing and like operations, but it's they did the one hard thing that others aren't really, really willing to do.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like it's like a great product. Like the product is good.

We did this in my sushi restaurant. So the restaurant that we started, we started as an online, a virtual restaurant, right? Before DoorDash and Uber Eats. But we like create a website. We would drive people to the website and you would order sushi and like we would make it in a commissary kitchen and we'd deliver it to you in like under 20 minutes. And so we had our menu and we go and we'd meet with, uh, Dan Ariely. Do you know who that is?

The author?

Cheap sushi is the worst type of sushi.

Exactly. So he's like, that's not what you want. And he goes, and so we, and by the, because we were, the reason I bring this up, we were an online restaurant, so we could literally A/B test. Now we didn't have the tooling. We weren't like smart enough to even know what an A/B test was. I didn't even know the phrase, but we would literally switch it by day. So we would do day 1, we would show menu A, day 2, we would show menu B, and then we would look at the number at the end of the day. Be like, how do we do? And so we raised prices and not only did revenue go up, but conversion rate went up. So we actually converted more customers and more money per customer. It's like, oh shit. Okay, Dan, what else could we do? He goes, sushi and the wine industry. I forgot the name he had for it, but he goes, they create their own language around their products. And we go, but that's why it's so inaccessible. I don't understand what any of that stuff means. He goes, exactly. And if you do know what it means, you feel smart and you feel like an insider. And we were like, what? And he goes, so we tested 3, 3 models of language. So we had what we had before, which was what we thought the accessible version, right? Uh, the Philadelphia roll, salmon and cream cheese wrapped up, tastes great. Right? That was like literally like how we used to write. And then we had the next one, which was language. He's like, so same Joe Sugarman principle. He's like, um, do you freeze your salmon? And we're like, no.

Awesome.

What was your cute way of explaining cream cheese?

I don't know. I think we might've just not even, not even mentioned it. Just put it at the end. You know, like, and a smooth, you know, the other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. I remember like, and the funny thing was with salmon, it was like, we were so excited about fresh, never frozen salmon. And it was like our calling card, not like those other guys, this frozen, frozen salmon. Um, and we used to go even further. We don't even have a freezer in our restaurant. That's how fresh this is. And then we like met, uh, the chef and he was like, you need to freeze the salmon. It kills the bacteria. We're like, oh shit, sorry.

Whoops. Well, and also, uh, flash frozen salmon to kill all of the bugs. And like all, like, have you ever seen the documentaries when they, when the Japanese catch the salmon that they're going to use, they drop it into the boat that has it, like it's a freezer, like they freeze them, like, you know what I mean? Flash frozen. Yeah. So like, I remember like learning about, I'm like, oh. Shit. Everything I've been told is a lie. Yeah. Um, all right. That's it. That was a good pod. What do you think?

Yeah. I mean, this was a good, uh, it's a good catch up. It's fun to hang out, fun to talk. And I feel like, I don't know if other people feel this way, but just debriefing interesting people we met and the way their mind works or the little schemes they got into is kind of my favorite thing.

Well, I stole it from you where I actually started writing, like I'll write notes. Right after I meet someone, even if you don't refer back to it, it's pretty good. It's good. 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.