$10M Business ideas w/ The Most Interesting Guy In Tech

We call you the most interesting man in tech, and I stand by it. One of the reasons you're great is because you made money in all these random ways that I wouldn't have even ever thought to. You've got a $450 million fund down. He also started Thistle, a food delivery business that's like doing over $100 million a year.

You're in SF running around like rich people, weirdos. What's hot? What are the kids into?

Everyone is on peptides and everyone's got their dealer.

I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I was like, so like, how do you plan to be legit with this whole thing? And he basically pulls up a picture of like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. He's like, yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some things through.

Say it with me, crony capitalism.

One of my best friends is completely jacked and he does not really work out. He does EMS.

It's going to go viral because it's going to be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need.

Dude, I'd rather take drugs.

This is the only podcast where you're going to get AI, a Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean, the range is incredible.

We're going to get canceled for this episode. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.

So one of the reasons you're great is because you made money in all these random ways that I wouldn't have even ever thought to. You like created a domain auction thing and made millions of dollars that way. I think you did like a fee fighters thing. Yeah, yeah. Credit cards.

Fee Fighters, credit card processing.

Yeah, credit card processing. You've got a $450 million fund down. You're probably, you know, if anything is in fintech, I go to you as basically like, hey, gut check, is this smart or is this dumb? Because it's easy to fool me. It's hard to fool you.

He also started Thistle.

Yeah, yeah.

He started or helped start a food delivery business that's like doing over $100 million a year. So all these different spaces. The guy got married in the metaverse at a Taco Bell, whatever the hell that means. We call you the most interesting man in tech. and I stand by it. I have yet to meet a more interesting man in tech. Welcome, Shil, back for round 3 or 4.

So happy to be back. Um, also I gotta tell you, since the last time I was on, so many things have happened as a result of me being on.

Like what?

Okay, so I was hiring a chief of staff and a bunch of people applied, but one person applied and the person who got the job, my current chief of staff, is a huge fan of MFM and she was debating leaving her current thing, which, which was paying her a lot more money. Her previous thing. And then she was like, fuck it. I got the opportunity to work with this guy who was on MFM. I'm going to take it. And so she, my chief of staff, joined because of MFM.

That's a lot of pressure for you. I hate when people say that, when they're going to like, they're like, I'm willing to take this big pay cut to work for you.

I'm like, it's a lot of pressure. Um, last time I was on, I talked about wanting to get better at like photography and video with AI. And this guy Jacob reached out and he was like, I can help you. And we went out for like hours in New York shooting. He, he showed me all this cool stuff. And then, I mean, I— your audience must be like the nicest people out there because also like recently I went back and looked at the YouTube comments, usually a cesspool, but your guys are so nice. Everybody that listens to your podcast, is super nice. Nobody was like, that guy has a big nose or whatever, whatever people would say on YouTube comments. Everyone is like just talking me up, talking you guys up. It's great.

Ari, the bots are working. Keep paying them.

Yeah.

All right. So we got— we wanted to brainstorm with you. So we asked you to bring some ideas, businesses that you think are interesting, would be cool to start. I think we said $10 million ideas, which I don't even know really what that means. But here we are. Shil brought 5 ideas. Let's run through some of the ideas. And then I want to talk about— oh, actually, wait, wait, before we go to the ideas, you had a great thing on— there's this idea of this 50-year mortgage. And you're my finance guy. You're my fintech guy. Yeah. 50-year mortgage. Trump is like, you know what, more years the better. Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

Wait, can you just give me context? I don't really follow the news. So, I mean, Trump—

Sure. So, so right now, 30-year mortgage is generally the maximum in the United States. So you pay off a home over 30 years. Trump wants to address the affordability crisis, which is a real problem. And said what we should do is extend mortgages to 50 years. So you have 50 years to pay it off instead of 30 years. I think it's a terrible idea because basically what happens is you give people more money. So the monthly— the month— the amount that they pay monthly goes down a little bit. But actually you're not earning equity in the home after like the average length of time that somebody our age stays in their home is relatively low. And by that time they'll earn no equity in the home or almost no equity.

I think The average person spends something like 6 or 7 years right now. It's not a lot.

Yeah, I think that's right. 6 and a half years.

And then a 30-year mortgage, I think the way it's set up right now, something like the first 15 years is just interest. Is that right?

Wow. So your home is your retirement plan, right?

In Japan.

In Japan. Yeah. In Tokyo.

Did you say one property was worth more than its whole?

So, okay. So it was the land value under the Imperial Palace. And so that's, it's about a half, half square mile of space in Tokyo.

So, okay, so maybe, maybe, maybe a bad idea. Yeah. From what I understand, because when rates drop here, basically the sellers just raise the price because they're like, oh, you're, you're buying not really on the whole price. It's like, what do I owe per month and what can I qualify for? If I can— if my monthly payment is X, I can afford that.

Yeah, exactly.

So what happens is when your monthly payment goes down, whether it's because you stretch the payments over 50 years or the rates go down, What happens is the sellers just can justify a higher price and it didn't affect anything. You just end up paying more because I think in a 30-year mortgage, I think you pay whatever the home price is plus something like, what is it, 50% or something? Is because the interest compounds over 30 years. And if it's 50 years, you're going to basically pay almost double the, the, the list price of the home because you pay so much more in interest.

Yeah, exactly. So I think the solution, like, We do have an affordability crisis, no question. But the solution is not to induce demand, because if you induce demand, what happens? You have the same fixed amount of properties. You're just making prices go up. So the solution is creating more supply, like making it easier to permit, like all this kind of reform to build more housing, make it, make it cheaper to build housing.

I was listening to this person who had a different take on affordability. He was like, are things less affordable today than they were in the '60s? He goes, look, here's the deal. In the 1960s, your version of a family vacation was a road trip to a state park once a year. Okay? You never traveled. You didn't go on a plane. You lived in an 1,800-square-foot home in Dayton, Ohio. Okay? Like, you had a crappy car, you didn't eat out, and you never took vacation. Now, young people today, they want more things, which is totally fine. They want to go international once a year. They want to go on these cool trips. They want fancy phones. A new home, even the average home nowadays is a new home with 2 ACs and a beautiful build with a really nice kitchen and really nice bathroom. And they're like, is it more— is it— are things less affordable or do people just want more stuff? Yeah, it was like, it was like an interesting take where I was like, that's okay. That actually does have a good point because even when I grew up, I didn't go— this isn't like a, oh, I'm so poor, but like, I didn't go on a plane until I was 18 years old. Like, we never— we didn't take like vacations like I do now. We didn't. Uh, I remember like the AC was broken one summer and we just like left the windows open. Uh, like, or like it was a lot of shared rooms, like bunk beds.

There'd be like 2 or 3 kids in a room. Now each kid needs their own room. Like you said, Sam, like 1,400, 1,500 square feet was like a nice sized house. And now that's not the case.

Have you guys ever seen the TV show The Wonder Years?

Yeah.

Uh, and it's like, yeah, one father, the husband could provide for the whole family. But he was angry all the time. He worked at a factory where he got like black lug and like—

Be a man.

Yeah. Like he was like borderline an alcoholic and he was like grumpy all the time. They didn't go anywhere. When they did, like the car broke down. Like times were different.

Yeah, I think so. Taking the other side though, I think we shouldn't be telling people like you shouldn't want these things. I think we should say—

I'm not saying that. I'm just joking. But yes. Yeah.

So I think, I think we should make stuff cheaper. And I think we can do that. Making the cost, the inputs cheaper, I think is all possible, but I hate demand side adjustments.

Uh, the way you said that is so, so, uh, made it so simple to me, which was if you make, if all you do is increase demand and the supply stays the same, you're not going to make things cheaper. You're going to make things more expensive. Uh, it's like, yeah, that obviously makes sense.

All right. So a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends, you're in luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through 'em. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start 'em, how to grow 'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link, click it, check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think.

What do you got, Sheila?

Hit us with the first one.

Okay.

Yeah. And I think you could do the same thing for like pools, decks, pergolas, like playgrounds, fences. Outdoor kitchens, like all this kind of stuff would be fairly easy to do. So you could build, you could build this in one niche and then go into all the others.

Do you guys remember the— there was like 2 or 3 tech guys that like left their like seemingly great tech companies, I think, and like started bathroom remodel businesses. I think the first one was this, was this guy named Roger. So Roger was like previously like I think he started Zynga or something like that.

He, he founded Mafia Wars, which was part of Zynga.

It's called Block, Block Renovation.

Was it just, and it was, was it both of them or just bathrooms?

Same thing. It was bathrooms. Maybe now they expanded to kitchens. And by the way, I don't know how these businesses have all done now, but like, super interesting where it was like, hey, here's 4 you can pick off the menu. You want your bathroom to look like this, this, this, or this? And it was like running Facebook ads. We talked about this years ago on the pod, running Facebook ads for people who wanted to upgrade their bathroom, which is not how they were, how any other construction company was selling to customers. So you had this new channel and they were acquiring customers to do these like expensive bathroom renovations using this like kind of pick-off-the-menu model, which I thought was pretty fascinating.

I think it's interesting, but it's, it's so complex and things can go wrong and get bad reviews based on your partner or whatever. I feel like it's a very complicated business. I don't know why. I know, I think Roger sold Maid to like Home Depot. I don't know how, I don't know how good of a business it was. What I like about this one is it's really software. Like you just have to sell these folks and you're not on the hook for anything else. And it can be a pretty lean team. I think you can easily do $10 million of revenue in this business.

Right. I love, I love this because, you know, I hate when people want to start a marketing agency because you're signing up to be a genius every month.

Yeah.

That's actually really good analogy.

I really care how the grout was done or whatever. I don't even know what that word is. I just used it. Did that work? I don't know.

Yeah, you're there.

Um, so, so, so, you know, you wanna sell things ideally that people don't have extreme like preference and, um, emotional attachment to, cuz you're, the, the bar for delivery is so much higher than it is for boring things that they don't really care about. So, you see, you know, I, I like the, I like the example you gave better. And also the fact that you could do it for, If you could do it for roofing, you can do it for lawns, you could do it for pools. You could do it. It's a blueprint business. Anybody can go do these businesses.

Is it true?

Is the stereotype true of Indian guys that they don't like being handy?

That's like saying, do white men not like to jump? Like, you know, it's not that we don't like being handy. We're just not handy. Okay. Like all the blood rushes to our brains. There's just nothing left in the limb.

My dad likes being handy, but like I've looked at, he owns some apartment buildings. And I've looked at reviews and people are like, whenever I need a problem, there's like Mr. MacGyver who's like trying to solve it with like, he doesn't have the right tools or anything, but he like creates some crazy way to solve some problem.

The Indian handyman comes to your house when you have a problem and just convinces you that it's okay and you need to compromise and life is not about getting what you want.

Jump down. Yeah, it'll be fine.

Exactly. And now look at you guys now just talking about like, uh, you know, like, uh, bathroom remodeled startups.

No, but this one works. This is an Indian-friendly business. It's satellite images. Exactly. Price quoting, and then you hand it to a strong guy who's gonna be able to go do the, do the manly stuff. Exactly. Strong idea with number 1. All right, let's go to number 2.

So that, that's number 1. And then number 2 is maybe an offshoot on that. Like you could start with number 1 and go into number 2, but every, let, let's use this back, backyard guys. So every service business runs the same workflows. Like you get a call or an online whatever, Thumbtack. Um, so you have to answer calls, you schedule jobs, then you dispatch a crew, you follow up, and you respond with an, with an estimate. And then, you know, you schedule the job and then you ask for reviews. And I think all of that stuff, a lot of that stuff is super automatable. And I think the big unlock is actually AI voice. Like, I think a lot of people are sleeping on how good AI voice is already today. And how useful it would be for something like this. Actually, yesterday or the day before, Bill Ackman posted something about Elon Musk and he was like, I'm not sure if this was AI or not. And like, the three of us are like, are you fucking kidding me? It's obviously AI.

It was a fake video about Elon Musk. And it was so obviously fake. It like didn't have his mannerisms or anything. And it was like talking slowly. It was kind of his voice, kind of not. But the fact that Bill Ackman, I don't know how old he is, maybe 60, he couldn't tell, or he was like, I'm not sure if this is AI. So that means that AI voice is already good enough. If Bill Ackman's fooled by this video, then like a lot of people are fooled by AI voice. So already these service providers should have, should be having AI voice do the work for them. And I think it's already good enough. It's just going to get better in the next year. So I think instead of a contractor hiring an office manager, you give them an AI office manager for like a few hundred bucks a month. And it's actually, you, you might think of it as a money saving thing, but it's actually not. It's more than that. It's like you have super fast response time. People responding round the clock. Like I, whenever, what, when I decided to do this backyard remodel was like a Sunday afternoon. And nobody's responding to me then. But like the first person to respond is way more likely to get the job than the next person, the person after that. So like you respond super fast, there's no missed calls, you text to follow up, like it does all that stuff for you in a super easy app, man.

Exactly. And Shil, what do you think is going to be the challenge of— because I've seen it. This idea makes so much sense to me. And there's, you know, there's a couple of them out there. What do you think is going to be the key? If you're the founder, you're running a business like this, what do you think you need to do to win? What would you do in your maybe go-to-market or like how would you, how would you take this idea that I think a lot of people are going to have, but how would you end up being the winner? What do you think? What do you think would make the difference between winning and fourth place?

Yeah. So it's too bad that AI robocalling is illegal. 'Cause what I would probably do is just have my voice— I would just have my voice agent call each of these people, right? Right. So maybe you can do it where, like, I don't know what the legality of this is, but like, maybe you do it where you call, your AI voice agent calls in and you're on the call and it, it, maybe it's fine then. And the AI voice agent is so good that you convince them. So you just call each of these people and convince them that their agent is so good. Like, don't you want to try this? Try it for free. I'll just send you leads right now. And you do it that way. And, and it can be a great business.

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I want to ask you, so you have like 2 or 3 more ideas on here that are actually really good. One that is like, like has the least amount of information on it. I actually have a question about it. Let's do it. So you put on here something about peptides because everyone, because everyone in SF is doing it. And yes, this is me just like wanting to get information. So peptides, basically it's a category of drugs, whatever we can talk about it. But like oftentimes people use peptides and TRT and HGH like interchangeably or in the same ballpark. Are you saying that all the nerds in SF are now on testosterone or peptides?

Everyone is on peptides and everyone's got their dealer. So, so the way this works is like Peptides are like these amino acids that tell your brain to, to repair or regulate something.

They're like precursors to protein or something like that where you can like—

So it's really good for a bunch of things that your body can do and regulate. So like healing, body composition, like give you more energy, control your appetite. Those are GLP-1s. The problem is, the problem with this business idea is they're not legal or they're, they're legal for research purposes.

They're not approved for the applications that people are using them for.

Uh, interesting. So you're saying maybe right now, because the legality and the approval part of selling the things directly is sketch. Yeah. You would build the biggest, most trusted information source so that when the time comes that this becomes more clear, you either become the highest value affiliate or you yourself could start to, to deal some, deal peptides.

Exactly. Exactly right. Have you guys heard of peptides or you have friends on them?

I heard of it because Sam, like 5 years ago, before peptides was really a thing, told me his Achilles hurt. And then he was on some Reddit forum and got a vial of something and injected it into his body. And I was like, bro, what are you doing? You know, just taking drugs off the internet. And he's like, it's amazing. I feel like Wolverine.

Yeah. BP-157, baby.

Oh, people love BP-157.

Dude, my back pain.

Somebody told me about it.

My daughter who was just born, that's her middle name, BP-157. Like, I love that stuff. So yeah, look, like I've always been like into this type of stuff. And if you listen to the podcast, you know, I'm going to kind of brag a little bit here, but like semaglutide and Ozempic, dude, when it, when it got popular, we were— that was old news to us on this podcast. We had been talking about it. All right. I had already overdosed on it. I could have told you all about it. And then when I— and so I was into this stuff in San Francisco. And then I moved to Austin, and that's when I really got my fix, man. Like, every jack guy ever was like showing me all the cool stuff that they're doing. And not a lot of the stuff was like, like, it wasn't like a— I don't know actually the definition of a steroid, but it wasn't like an anabolic, like make your muscles huge. But there was like BP-157 for when I hurt my Achilles. Someone was like, you should try this or you should try it your shoulder. And there's all these like weird peptides and weird things that were, were around longevity, not like how do I look like Triple H? Like, you know, in wrestling, like, not like, how do I look huge, but how to, like, live a long time. And so, yeah, I've been fascinated by all this stuff. And I think that, I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff and I still test a lot of this stuff. And I got a guy, I text him, I got a guy, I text him and I Venmo him. It's incredibly shady. However, Sean and I invested in a company called Hone. Hone's first— well, I forget what they're originally called.

Peak, Peak Health or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. I don't even remember. But they were originally just TRT. Now they do everything. And we get the monthly updates and this is like the chart is like you want the chart to look this way. And I think that they're doing a really good job of not looking like, you know, for a long time actually we talked about TRT clinics, Sean, and you and I did. And it was like, dude, the biggest TRT clinic is like this guy based out of Vegas and he's got these like stores and you go to the store to get your TRT and they have like La-Z-Boy leather sofas and like Monday Night Football on. And it's like, it was like the lamest, like, unmost untrustworthy thing. And so Hone is actually a good example of they do, they also do female stuff too. I don't know what type of drugs women take, but they sell women drugs as well. And they've done a much better job of—

it's not like Spanish where there's like the male and female pronunciation of the verb.

Yeah.

Estas duras. Like, you know, what are you talking about? Women drugs?

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know.

Whatever you guys take, whatever you're into, I guess there's a little bit of everything for everyone.

This is the only podcast where you're going to get AI, TRT, a Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean, the range is incredible. Um, dude, I was here, I looked at this peptide business recently, 'cause same thing, I'm like, okay, clearly there's demand, right? But the, you know, how do you do this legally and what's the good way to do this? And, um, I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I was like, so like, how do you plan to be like legit with this whole thing? 'Cause it's unclear what the legality is gonna be of this. And he basically pulls up a picture of like, it's like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. It was like, he is like, yeah, we're pretty sure we're gonna be able to get some things through that will make— and I was like, oh wow, okay. That's like probably one of the best slides I've ever seen in a deck.

Yeah. He pulls out a card from his wallet. He goes, I have an answer right here. You're like, sir, that's a get out of jail free card from the game Monopoly. That doesn't work.

And so I was like, I think actually, yeah, being— we're really close with Bobby Kennedy would be like a perfectly reasonable part of your business plan right now.

So, so is that really what he said?

They're like, say it with me, crony capitalism.

Oh dude, this is, this is a good topic because there's so much of it. And actually, like, I have never in the past, I'd never seen anybody pitch like a core part of their pitch as being, I'm close to administration. I've heard so many pitches about that now, which, which is kind of sad, honestly. But that is what it is.

Slide 13, we know a guy. Yeah, exactly. It's like, what? Why is this in your deck?

Totally. Um, actually, like, I've been searching and ChatGPT will not answer me a bunch of questions I have because it says peptides are not medically cleared. Like, we can't answer this question. So like, one of my main sources of information is gone.

Right. By the way, again, a little— can we do a little politics tangent real quick? Earmuffs if this bothers you. But Sam, I just thought you'd find this entertaining. Did you see the Trump thing about— do you know who CZ is? Do you know who CZ is from Binance?

The Binance guy? Didn't he like pardon him? But Trump definitely doesn't know who that guy is.

So he pardoned him and then he gets interviewed. So the guy was in jail, I think, for 4 months or something like that. And this is guy. Owned like the biggest Asian crypto exchange and was like in whatever it was, in hot water for money laundering and wire fraud, like a bunch of stuff where it's like, you know, bad people are sort of using your exchange to do money laundering or something. And they asked him, they were like, but you pardoned this guy and then he bought like $2 billion of your son's cryptocurrency. Like, don't you see how that seems bad? Like, why did you pardon him? He's like, Here's the thing. You want to know what? You want to know? I don't know who he is. And I was like, wow, the audacity. It was just the audacity of saying, I don't even know who he is. Don't know anything about the guy. And he pardoned him. I just thought that was one of the most crazy things I've ever seen. It's like, this man has no fear. He's not afraid of anything. He does not fear anything if he's going to say that.

He pardoned the— what was the guy from Nikola?

Trevor Milton.

He pardoned that guy too. That guy, what the hell, man? And then they looked into it and they're like, oh, that guy donated.

Uh, yeah. It's a get outta jail, not for free card.

Yeah.

Get outta jail at this fixed price.

Yeah. That was insane.

And the price actually very low. It was like a couple million dollars.

Uh, and did he really say that word for word? He was like, I don't know.

You know that thing where it's like, you're not, you're not ugly, you're just poor. It's like you're not— it's like you're not, you're not a criminal. You're just poor. You know what I mean? It's like you can get out for— if you got access to a couple million dollars.

There's that joke. I forget who— where it originally came from. They're like, look, if you own the bank, like $50 grand, that's a big deal. That's a— it's really bad for you. But if you own the bank— if you owe the bank $500 million, that's really bad for the bank.

Yeah, exactly. The bank's problem.

Yeah. The other one that was crazy was that George Santos, That I just thought it was so funny. Like, this is like a congressperson who, like, lied about everything. Like, he would have a different college that he went from each time you talked to him.

He claimed—

the guy said he was Jewish. He said he was Jewish, and then he was like, did you see? I meant Jewish, kind of Jewish.

Oh, here where I live, there was like a New York congressman or something like that, like kind of a— or the local side. I don't remember what it was, not that important, but he was like He was a gay Brazilian guy. I think he's Brazilian. And yeah, he had the audacity to tell people that he was Jewish. And they were like, George Santos, I don't think you're Jewish. He goes, oh, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jew-ish. Like, I like hanging out with, like, Jewish people.

Honestly, it's an all-timer.

It's an all-timer. And then, like, he had so much audacity. Like, he claimed that his mom died in 9/11, but, like, there are very good records of who died in 9/11. And he, he, he like lived in Brazil at the time. There was no chance that that was possible. He just, anyway, pretty, pretty incredible.

All right. Ear muffs can come off. I know the politics. Uh, all right. So what else you got?

Oh, the surrogacy thing or the EMS thing.

Those are all questions.

Okay. Let's do the surrogacy one.

Okay. Let's do the surrogacy one. So, okay. So personal note, my wife and I, we're like old. I'm, I'm, I'm 43. My wife's 40. And, uh, my wife has a genetic condition that we need to screen against., and, um, being pregnant can trigger this condition that she has. So our doctors have said, if you can avoid pregnancy, you should do so. And we were like, okay, we can afford it. Let's do it. So we started going down the surrogacy path. And, for those of you who don't know, surrogacy is when, uh, another mother, another person carries your child. And so you, you transfer your embryo to that person and then they carry your child. And it's growing very substantially. So like, this wasn't really a thing not that long ago. And then actually New York only legalized it 5 years ago. So it's still growing very rapidly. It's obviously extremely common in the gay community because that's the only way they can have kids, you know, their own, their own children. And it's, it's actually a very complicated thing how it works. There are a bunch of surrogacy agencies out there. And the surrogacy agencies, they have a, a number of women that they work with, carriers, and, and then they try to match you. But the way it works is they can only introduce you to, to people that are in their platform. So imagine if it was like, and it's, it's a matching thing. Like there are a bunch of things that we care about. There's a bunch of things that she cares about. We ultimately found a great match and she's, she's wonderful. We love her.

And how much is it and how much does the woman get?

Okay.

And that goes to her, plus the agency takes a cut.

Is that how it works? Agency takes a cut. She gets a certain amount. So I think in our case, she gets $75,000 roughly, um, something in that ballpark. There are a bunch of, there are a bunch of things that you know, there's a base fee and then a monthly fee and travel and time off work and all sorts of childcare, all sorts of stuff that's embedded in that. And then there are a bunch of— there's like legal fees. And then of course there are medical fees for like actually doing the transfer and her healthcare and her insurance that we pay for.

And do you get to hang out with her or is it like, do you see her on a monthly, like do check-ins or?

How do they recruit these women now? That's such a strange way to recruit someone.

Like, it's a great question. I don't know. Um, but I think what they do is there are all these communities. Reddit, Facebook, etc., where people are posting, and, um, you go there and people— and a lot of the agencies are there just recruiting.

Can I go full, full crazy here?

Yeah.

Surrogacy MLM. Yeah, I think an MLM has solved the marketing challenge of how do you recruit other women to go like kind of do this thing for money. And this is just the like premium. Why sell makeup and candles when you could have a downline generating, you know, $100,000 a pop, right? Like, that's a— it's a premium MLM, man.

I feel it's so crazy. I've got so many friends doing this. When I was a little kid, like, or in my earlier 20s, like, the only thing I knew about surrogacy was that Amy Poehler movie where she, you know, she's like the surrogate. She's the surrogate for Tina Fey and she like eats Big Macs and it's like, yeah, can we change her to be healthy? And like, that was like, that was the gist of the movie. But I didn't know anything about this. And now I think I probably know 5 or 6 or 7 friends that are— have done it this way. It's a pretty wild experience. It's also like, science is amazing. It's one of these things where I learned about this and I'm like, this is just absolutely insane. I can't believe this exists.

So, Shil, if you said there's 10,000 surrogate births a year roughly, you think that's ballpark right?

Yeah, it's growing fast. I think it's growing like 10% a year, but let's just say 10,000.

So if it was $100,000 average spend per surrogate, surrogacy, that's $1 billion a year of sort of revenue generated across all the different agencies today.

But yeah, but note that most of that goes to the surrogate. So. Right.

You know, if you're a venture investor, right, like, how do you describe to somebody who's not a VC the appeal of the sort of niche, weird marketplace, that behavior that seems a little fringe today, But oh my God, wait, people spend how much money watching people break open Pokémon card decks? And Whatnot is a $12 billion company now? Watching people open Pokémon card packs live on the internet? What do you mean?

Right?

There's like, there's an appeal to this. How do you describe that, that kind of phenomenon and what, and where the, and the upside of the, of the sort of the fringe?

So me and Tyler, the CEO of Beehive, came up with a little challenge for you. It's the newsletter challenge. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a big fan of newsletters. I got my own newsletter. I also had a business that was a newsletter business that was amazing. I wrote this newsletter about crypto. We grew it to quarter million subscribers and we ended up selling it after a year for millions of dollars. And I want you to be able to do the same thing in your business. So we're doing a challenge. $10,000 is on the line. Plus me and Tyler will actually be in your corner as growth advisors. You just need to go to beehive.com/mfm and you either start a new newsletter or you move your current newsletter over there and 5 finalists will get picked to pitch me and Tyler, sort of like Shark Tank, and the winner gets $10,000. So go to beehive.com/mfm. That's beehive.com/mfm to enter the challenge today.

Can I ask you about one more thing you have here? Because this is on the long list of things I thought were so stupid when I first heard about this and people seem to love it and it's You know, what do I know? Sean, have you heard of EMS?

Is that, uh, like an ambulance? Is that, is that what EMS is?

That's another EMS. Electronic muscle stimulation.

Okay. Tell me about it. Is this like the thing where you get six-pack abs by putting the electrode on your thing and you watch TV?

Yes. So, okay, here, here's the thing. So you gotta try it first of all, but, uh, My, one of my best friends in the world.

Dude, I'd rather take drugs.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair. So, so one of my best friends in the world, completely and utterly jacked, and he was not 5 years ago, and he does not really work out. He does EMS. So what it is, is he has this little machine that he bought for $35 on Amazon. Look for TENS, T-E-N-S, and EMS.

Oh, we have one of those. That's for like during contractions. My wife used the TENS machine.

Yeah. So he puts those all over his body and he, like, jacks it up. I hate the feeling of it, so I don't do it, but I have seen it work for him so well that this is something. And so recently I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and I went to a workout facility where they have it set up like on a thing that you wear. And part of the problem is it needs direct skin contact. So it's annoying to put on and off. If it was easier to put on and off, I would be doing this thing. But I went to a facility where they had this thing and they like, you put a shirt on that has these electrodes on it and they spray water on it. So it makes it touches your skin basically. And it's an amazing workout. Like it was one of my favorite workouts ever and it was 15 minutes. I know it sounds like total bullshit.

Wait, so you do— with this one, you do work out while it's happening?

You do a little bit of a workout, but it's, it's working you out a lot more because of the stimulation in your body.

Wait, wait. So let's go to the case study of your friend. Your friend 5 years ago, not Jack.

Tell me his name.

I'm going to go to his Instagram. His name's Amrit. Dear, he's going to love this.

Okay, so Sam, pull up a picture. Ari, get a picture. Let's get a screenshot.

Do we got a shirtless pic?

Yeah, we need a shirtless picture.

I can send you guys a pic.

So he, he's jacked now. And you're saying that the in-between, there wasn't like a CrossFit phase and then this, it was really just this over a period of time plus diet, I assume.

Yeah, this has the, the viral factor of being weird, right? Like of people hating on it, right? Like, yeah, if I posted this and I was like, this is all you need, you're going to get all the comments about like, dude, just do it, blah, blah, blah, you know, like, and so it's going to go viral because it's going to be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need.

Yeah. So the problem with the $35 product, so he bought it for me and I— the problem is you have to like do these sticky things you have to put on your body and it just like takes time. What he does is his primary workout is he flies a lot for work and when he's on the plane he's doing it the whole time and that's his primary workout.

Does he put this through the x-ray machine and they're like, what the It's a little thing.

It's like the size of a phone. It's nothing.

Oh, but so this thing you linked, this Catalyst thing, this is the full body suit. You go there and you exercise, or what is this?

Yeah, that's, that's the full body suit. That's basically this, but already in a suit form. All right.

I think I may have to try this. Sam, what do you think? As a, as an actual fit person, what do you think of this? This, you might not be the market actually.

I love shortcuts though.

Like.

You know, we, like, if I think we had someone on the pod be like, well, I don't get why people hate on get-rich-quick schemes. Getting rich quick is the best way to get rich. So like, if I can get like more fit without doing anything, I'm on board. Is there actually data that backs this up? I think it's pretty lame, but if I can—

Did you not hear the story about his friend?

Yeah, no, it's a good—

I'm interested in the data.

So I think there is data on catalysts. Um, people use it. I think the question is whether these $35 machines work, and I only have my one friend as a data point. And the funny thing is, like, we've all seen it work for him, and yet none of us others in the friend group have done it. And the reason for that is it's annoying, like, to put these things on, and it's painful. And he's willing to, like, every plane ride, he's willing to just do it the whole plane ride. And I'm not. But when I did this workout, he took me to the workout class in New York 2 weeks ago. And when I went to that workout class, I was like, this is actually really fun. And I know I'm getting a great workout. Like, you feel the next couple of days. It was like the good kind of hurt after a great workout. So I was like, I know this is working, but how come I haven't heard more about this? So I think there's opportunity in building a product and this like Barry style workout where like you teach people how to do it.

Dude, this looks pretty sick. The vests like look like, like, like armor, like body armor.

Like, you look like a Navy SEAL. Yeah, except for I don't know what this tank is here. That, that's a little bit suspicious. I don't really fully understand what all the pieces are, but dude, if people are buying $6,000, $6,000 cold plunges at their home and, you know, $5,000 to $10,000 saunas at their home and red light therapy, my brother-in-law's got a, got a red light therapy bed in his house and his kids are doing it because it's like, good for their sports, whatever, recovery, whatever this is. Like, there's really no end to the kind of wellness, you know, rabbit hole, right? And there's always people who are going to look for the next edge. It's not too dissimilar to a reformer machine in a Pilates class, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a tool that gets you more leverage on, you know, your, your hour of exercise. Although this makes me want to make fun of it, it also makes me want to secretly do it.

These guys, I actually was looking up these guys, I think they emailed me, this Catalyst guys, asking if I wanted to test this out. And, uh, I don't know if I replied, but if they're listening to this—

Wanted you to be an influencer? Was this during the Sam Fitness influencer era?

It could have been. That was a great era. I think I influenced literally dozens of people.

Does 6 weeks count as an era though?

Well, you know, it's a season.

That, that was— You transitioned to the dad, dad influencer pretty quickly and, uh, the content shifted.

Once I became a kid, once I had a kid, I wanted to quit posting shirtless photos online. But just so you know, it's still there. It doesn't go away. It's still there. And so Catalyst, I'll totally try this thing. This looks cool. I like to make fun of these things, but suit me up, baby.

There's an announcement on their site of like, hey, I know a lot of you have had a very, very bad experience, but there's a new owner and we're going to, you know, do it right this time. So, you know, maybe it's been a little bumpy road.

Yeah, I'm, I'm in a bunch of like these longevity groups in San Francisco on WhatsApp, and people were like trying to buy the company.

Can you— wait, wait, that's actually— okay, you just gave me a beautiful opening. You're in SF, you're kind of running around like a bunch of like rich people, weirdos, successful people, like this really cool combination of people. What are the kids into? Like, this longevity stuff? What else is interesting to them? What, like, you know, I don't live in San Francisco anymore. Sean lives a little bit outside of SF now. Before, when we were there, it was the best place to see what's going to happen in a handful of years because there's all these weirdos doing cool stuff like sharing their couch on a website. And now Airbnb is a thing, or sharing their car. What, what are some other interesting stuff that the oddballs are into?

Yeah, I think there's— so I think we talked about a lot of them. Peptides. Nobody's drinking. You know, I think this Bryan Johnson has done wonders for a lot of folks in just changing how they think about life. Not necessarily all good. Like, I don't think drinking is absolutely terrible, but I think probably people should drink less than they do. One interesting one, uh, that I did not— like, a new business, like, as, as crazy as Airbnb and Uber were, I think prediction marketplaces are a good one. It's obviously not just the San Francisco thing, but it's the kind of business that, like, I probably would not have funded when these companies got funded. I would say, like, this is never going to work. It's going to be highly illegal. But the fact that you can—

the difference between a prediction market and so prediction market, does that just mean like guessing who's going to win president or who's going to win the mayor?

Yeah. So, so one of my pushbacks was initially was it's only going to be used for elections because, you know, that's obviously something that everybody is thinking about and wants to, wants to bet on. But actually they use it for so many other things too, like their, their political outcomes all the time. People are using it. It's basically like a proxy for sports betting. You can do all sorts of secondary derivative products on top of equity investing. There are markets for everything. I think there are a lot of questions in my mind about why it's legal and like, can you influence the outcome of something that you're betting on? Like, you know, is if there's a marketplace on whether how many companies BTV would invest in the next year. I'd be, you know, I'd be betting on that while, while participating as well. But I think there's no question that there's a huge opportunity in this space.

Did you see the Coinbase earnings call thing?

Yeah, that was fucking hilarious.

What happened?

Did you see this? So there's a, there was a prediction market on Polymarket for the Coinbase earnings calls, like, oh, the Q3 earnings call, will, will Brian Armstrong say any of these words or how many times he'll say these words?

Oh my gosh.

And then at the very end of the call— How much volume? I think it was probably, you know, it was low.

It was single digit thousands.

It was like a very small thing. But his team passed him a note and he goes, oh, before we hang up here, I just would like to say Web3, crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Thank you very much. And he just basically, he's like, you know, just for all the prediction markets out there, you know, here we go. And he just hit all the words. He just said 7 words and then laughed. And then basically like they hung up the call. And I thought that was so funny. But of course it's not that funny when like, it's real.

All these like sports things going on right now where in the UFC, like in the UFC, if you're like a nobody UFC guy, you get like $25 grand for fighting. And they've like flagged a bunch of— they flagged a bunch of fights where they're like, this is very suspicious because there was like, you know, $80 grand on the line for a fight that the guy would only earn $25,000. And they're being investigated. So yeah, there's going to be a lot of downsides. But so like the average tech nerd, like when I was in San Francisco, it was like a joke. Like it was like, the Giants play here? Where are the Giants? Like no one knew about like, you know, like it wasn't like particularly popular. I know Sean was into basketball, but like basketball or any sport wasn't particularly like, you know, that popular. Are the young tech guys caring about gambling for sports or is it all other stuff?

It's a lot of other stuff. I think sports is interesting and I think will be one of the key markets in the prediction space. But I think there are all sorts of other things like, like gambling on or, you know, predicting equity outcomes, uh, are interesting too. I, I, I look through those things all the time. I'm just curious. And it's, it's also uncanny how right they are and how ahead of the curve they are on some of these things.

Can I ask you about one more thing? Um, yeah, you made a very interesting statement. We said, what are 3 strong opinions that you have for life? And your number 1 opinion is, I, I think books are a waste of time.

It is the first thing I do when there's a book I'm interested in. I go to YouTube and I just look for a talk by the author. And if they're not interesting in the first 15 minutes of that YouTube video, the book is definitely not gonna be interesting. The book will probably have more, you know, it's not gonna be fully sufficient. But if you can't do, if you can't give a good talk, you probably don't have a good book.

Let me give a, a different opinion that's related. So I read a lot, like in terms of quantity, and I was rereading a book that I read when I was younger. Uh, I think it was like Robert Cialdini's Influence. You know, it's all about persuasion. And I was like, I've read all these other books on business and whatever. I should've just reread this same book. Every 6 or 3 months and not read any other book on this topic, and I would've been significantly further ahead. And so my opinion that I'm telling young people when it comes to reading, I'm like, pick like the 2 or 3 like classics or the greats of it and master it. Know it word for word and master it. And don't read, uh, a lot. Just read the same thing over and over and over again. And if you wanna read for fun, read for fun, but just do the same thing over and over again for your educational books.

What were the other, uh, 3 You said you had 3.

What did— and did you get a discount?

Um, I didn't get a discount, but I got like really, uh, like white glove service where they're like everything I want, they respond immediately. And I'm not trying to be a dick about it and like get something that I don't deserve, but it worked out quite well. Right.

But I wouldn't say no to you making it right either.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you want to give me a discount, I'll take it.

Uh, Shil, you're great, man. Thanks for coming on, uh, as always. So always super fun having you on.

Super fun to chat with you guys. This is great. 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.

Hey, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberge. He was the founding CRO of HubSpot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy's smart, and he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like Klaviyo and Vanta and OpenAI. And he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as, you know, head of sales or chief revenue officer. If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or head of sales that's looking to level up in your career, I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to The Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts.