#96 - The Entrepreneur Betting Billions On American Passenger Trains

What's up?

How are you?

I'm okay. I just— I'm packing up all my stuff and I had all my trash, which include garbage as well as furniture, packed outside my house really nicely for the garbage people to come. And I just got into a big argument with these crazies that were like digging through and throwing it all over the place. And I was like, can you guys not do that, please? And they're like, this is what we do. We destroy trash and we throw it all over the place. I was like, Oh, don't do that. It put me in a horrible mood.

So where did you net out? Did you just walk away or did they stop?

No, we got into a little pushing match and eventually—

A pushing match? What? Oh my God, that's amazing. You pushed the guy?

Yeah, it got into fight or flight mode, man. It pissed me off.

You were so easily triggered. It's amazing to me.

I'm on edge. I think that with Corona and the economy, like I said, I'm in fight or flight mode. And like, I think something changed. This will— I imagine this happened to you already, but like something changed when I got married. I was like, I'm in, like, I gotta protect.

Wait, I would have thought that like you'd like just totally get it on and like, it was love. It was like, oh, your adrenaline was going.

I was like, oh, this girl's shady. She probably is trying to get with that guy and me at the same time. Forget all this. And I was like, I'm not trying to be involved in any of this. I'm going to go home now.

So anyway, and now she's the mother of your children.

Yeah, exactly. So, so we ended up making— but long story short, I don't even have the fight or flight even when I'm in a fight. So, you know, there's something wrong with me.

That's a great story.

Yeah, so I don't think most people even know that story, but now, you know, hundreds of thousands of listeners know that one. My family doesn't know.

That is a good story. Mama Bear took care of it, sounds like.

Yeah, she, you know, snapped into gear in a way that I did not. So we both kind of don't talk too much about that, but we both know if a situation goes down, she's much more likely to react than me. I'm just sort of like easygoing, like, oh, this is interesting. What the hell's going on here?

Okay, well, at least you know your strengths.

Yeah. Oh, this is okay. So let's talk. Let's talk about some things. It's been a little while since we, we hopped on without a guest. What's been interesting to you?

Let me bring this up. And this is incredibly half-baked. We have a lot of topics here that seem like they have a lot more research, but I met this guy named Ryan Beagleman. I think his name is— do you know who that is?

No, never heard of him.

I met him in the Trends group. So Ryan started BizNow Media. BizNow Media was a— it was basically what we do. I mean, We are what they are. They were first for real estate and it was a newsletter business. He sold it for like $50 million and then he went— or like congruently, he started Summit Series, which is—

dude, everybody fucking started Summit Series. I've met 9 creators of Summit Series. How many of these guys are there?

Well, they all worked at BizNow. And so I think him and Elliot, I believe, were the guys. This guy Ryan was the CEO of it. Gotcha. So I believe he was the guy. Elliott's last name is Biznow, as in Biznow Media. I believe— I think they were the two guys and everyone else was also a guy, but not the guy. And so he started Summit Series. For those of you who don't know, it's like a— I don't know what—

it's kind of like a South by Southwest kind of thing.

And they'll rent like a cruise ship and people go. It kind of turns into like an orgy, it sounds like, where just people party. You pay $3,000. It's not that good of a business, but I think it's okay. Like, I think it just affords a lifestyle.

Created a sweet life for them. They bought up— they bought the mountain that they did the Summit Series on, and now they own—

yeah. So here's what they did is they bought a mountain. So they raised money from people and investors and rich people who would tend to basically— yeah, yeah. Would put in $1 million and you bought a plot of land on this mountain and they're trying to build this city, this town. It's called Powder Mountain. I met him in our Trends group. And so I'm going to go and stay with him for a week on Thursday. And, um, he's got this big— yeah, in Utah, he's got this big house that he's gonna let me crash at. Really interesting guy, and I'll do a podcast with him, and we could do a threesome, do it all together, or we could do it, uh, I could do it just with him. But really interesting guy. And I also talked to Joe Lonsdale. Did I tell you about him?

I know about him loosely. I've heard his name before. He's with 8VC. So what was your conversation with him about?

I met him on Twitter, and then we did a phone call. He's the guy— he was, uh, like a— he was like employee number 12 or something, or some early thing at PayPal as an intern, then eventually partnered with Peter Thiel and started Palantir, which is going to go public for like $50 billion, some crazy stuff. Um, and anyway, what I'm getting at, what we are all discussing, and I talked to Joe about new cities, right? This is something that we've discussed a little bit, and it's something I'm very fascinated about. And what I'm noticing is, and I can't tell it's because I've got a lot of like affluent friends who make a a lot of money, but many of them are saying that they want to spend 6 months in one part of the country and 6 months in another part of the country. And I can't decide if this is like one of those things where you learn, where you like, what's it called? Like the yellow taxi thing where like, where you know that taxis are yellow and then you start seeing them all over the place, right? Or if this is like actual like trending. And so anyway, something that I'm fascinated about is like these new planned cities and it's so interesting to me.

So was this the one? Because I just saw one recently and I mean, we might be talking about the same thing. The 5-minute city? Is this that? So 5-minute city. So somebody's creating a little city and the core premise might not even be a whole city, might just be like kind of a living community, like a smaller version of town or bigger than a neighborhood, smaller than a town. But the idea is that everything is a 5-minute walk. So everything you need, groceries, the gym, whatever, all the kind of basic things that people go do with regularity, will be a 5-minute walk from where you live. And they want to create a walking lifestyle city based around that one constraint. And they're going to build it out that way. And they're going to try to find people who want to live in that manner. And I like that. I like all these experiments around new cities. There are some that are trying to do it around self-driving cars. So they're basically saying, hey, self-driving cars, the tech can actually work, but the tech is risky when you have a whole bunch of human-powered cars also on the road.. And so if you could just start with a blank slate and have roads that are designed a certain way that don't have pedestrian traffic and don't have human drivers on it, you could actually have autonomous vehicles zipping up and down these roads and transporting people back and forth. It could be awesome. And so some people are trying to start cities just around that. Some people are buying old ghost towns like in Nebraska and Wyoming where infrastructure all got built. It got abandoned for one reason or another and they picked it up on the cheap and they're trying to revitalize it. So I think these are awesome projects, like really, really awesome projects.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it's really cool. So a lot of times they call it a charter city and a charter city is a, is a city that's granted— I'm just reading the definition— a city that's granted special jurisdictions to create a new governance system. And this isn't like a new thing. I think that even San Francisco is considered a charter city where you can like make your own rules a little bit within some type of constraints. I know. And then there's like planned communities. One of those is Steubenville in Ohio. It was started by two brothers in the 1920s where they just bought a large plot of land and they started planning it out and they were very meticulous about what happened to what. And people started buying homes there. Silicon Valley actually was a little bit like this. The Marc Andreessen's father-in-law actually owned— is Marc Andreessen, the famous investor. His father-in-law is a billionaire real estate guy. And in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, Silicon Valley was farmland, and they like said, let's make this a town. And so anyway, it's kind of an interesting concept, and I've been reading a lot of history about it. So like, the reason I like reading about Titans and Vanderbilt and all this stuff is you can see how they did stuff. And like, a lot of towns in Staten Island and places like that were created because Vanderbilt was like, let's create a ferry to go there, and whole towns are built around it. So it's not like a new concept, but it's incredibly interesting right now because I can't tell if people are truly fed up with cities or if it's just something I'm fed up with and I notice others are too.

So yeah, this is sort of like, you know, if you think about what are the coolest sort of— what are the sounds cool ideas? So a few years ago or many years ago, the sort of the sounds cool idea was I'm going to create a new school system. I'm going to create a new university. So you had like AltSchool and you have Lambda School, you have Make School, you have all these other schools.. And that was sort of like, wait, that's a, that's a startup. That's not a startup, right? Like, that's different. And there's a whole bunch now that are in the rockets space. So there's a whole bunch of rocketry and satellite startups that are like, yeah, we don't, we don't just make apps. We like, you know, launch shit into the, into fucking orbit. And yeah, that's what we do. And I feel like the sounds cool ideas of today, a lot of them are around cities starting a new, a new jurisdiction that's either going to be different on policy or like the kind of urban planning and design. And that doesn't mean it's not actually cool, but you do have to be careful because some people are going to go into it just because it sounds like a cool project to be working on. But I want to meet some of the people who are behind this. I know Y Combinator had a, had a project called New Cities that they were working on. I don't know. I haven't heard anything about it. So I'm like, I don't know what's, what's actually— I don't know if it failed or what. This was years ago. And we have a friend of a friend who, who I know has bought one of these. So I'd love to have him on and come talk about this. But it reminds me of a different thing I wanted to talk to you about. And we can come back to the cities thing if you want. But do you know who Wes Edens is?

No.

So Wes Edens is a billionaire. So this Wes would be the Billy of the Week because he's doing something cool. So he owns the Milwaukee Bucks, but that's not obviously how he made his money. That's how he spent his money. And then he has this— I think his investment firm is called like Fortress Capital. I think he's a private— I think he's a private equity guy. I'd have to go confirm that.

But yeah, I'm looking up— Fortress is like a really big name hedge fund. I think SoftBank owns it, actually.

Right, right, right. Uh, yeah, he sold— he sold a stake of it to SoftBank.

So he's just a big billionaire who made money.

I am— you're getting me all hot and bothered. I love this. I'm looking up— so I'm familiar with Virgin Trains. I'm looking them up.

If you go to companieshouse.gov.uk, you can actually look at and see what they've been operating in the UK for a long time because Branson did this, you know, basically was like, okay, the government runs the trains, that, that probably means that they suck. We can take over and we can run it here. So this is Virgin Trains USA, which is now the like USA version of that, that he's, that he's trying to do. But he's just invested into Wes Edens's project as a minority investor.

I think this is awesome. So I've actually considered doing this. There's a train, I think it's Amtrak. Do they call it the Zephyr route? I think they call it like— there's like a route that you can take where you take an Amtrak from California, I think, to New York. And it takes a long time, like 5 or 10 days, like takes a while, but it's like $200.

It's really cheap. Chicago to the Bay Area and it goes via Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno.

That's— yeah. So it sounds awesome. It's pretty cheap and affordable. But Amtrak— wow, Amtrak is something that I remember as a kid we used to take it every once in a while, like, and it was like something like, like poor people would take. Like, I would take it when it's like what you do when you don't have any money. It's like it was almost, almost like a Greyhound, right? And it's so cool. I'm really into this.

But in other places like Europe, I know in India I've done this a whole bunch. You go on the trains there, it's awesome. It's like a hotel on wheels, you know what I mean? Like It's so fun to go on. You get your cool little cabin and the food trolleys come by and you're looking out the window and it's like a nice ride and you can go to sleep. You can sleep overnight on it. And I know in Europe it's the same way. And I just don't— I never hear anyone doing that in the US. I'm sure people are doing it, but I don't think it's a big part of the travel culture here. And how cool would it be if they made it happen?

So how's it going with this guy? I'm just looking him up as you talk, like he's making a lot of press because this is a really romantic It's a romantic idea.

Exactly. And he's doing a good job because he needs the press because, uh, so the, the catch with this is like, oh, you need $5 billion to build out this track. And it's like, uh, okay, well, where the hell am I going to get $5 billion? And so the reality is that a lot of this money comes from public financing. It's a combination of public and private. And so one of the reasons to get so much press is because it really helps you raise the money, raise money and get access to capital that is in the public domain. That's sort of like like he has this tax-free bond that he released, you know, for Florida. So they put— he floats out this tax-free bond, raises $1 billion or $1.5 billion on it. And, you know, this is like free money. And so it's in the same way that sort of, you know, Elon will go and announce a car and everybody puts down $100 and he gets like a $5 billion loan, you know, interest-free loan from customers, essentially. And so there's an art to the trick of this business is really the financing. Being good about the financing, and there's— the jury's out whether they'll be able to pull this off or if they'll just get buried under debt.

I'm so into this. This is incredibly attractive to me. What's interesting, what I've learned as I've gotten older and seen people succeed is there are sometimes there's these ideas that appear as the one thing, but it takes an entirely different expertise to do. So for example, this guy Wes, is that his name? Wes Edens. He is from Fortress, which their expertise is all about raising money from rich people and rich organizations like governments. Or families or whatever. And then his job is allocating that money. He's just like— to kind of be disrespectful to him, he's a spreadsheet monkey, right?

Right.

Where he's like, well, if I change this by a little bit— and that's totally simplifying what this person does. And I understand that. But you think like, well, when I think of a train, I think of like a Richard Branson type where he's got to create this like amazing, like, experience with the purple lights inside.

It's like, nope. Doesn't matter. It's all about how are you going to financially engineer the funding of this, of this infrastructure.

Yeah. And when you think about a business, you think, I have to know something that other people don't know, and, or I have to be good. I have a skill set that other people don't have. And what's interesting and a little bit discouraging to me personally is when I see these things, I'm like, man, this isn't about having a good vision for a train. This is about being able to creatively finance something, which means coming up with interesting schemes and documents and strategies. Not building a brand. I mean, it is also building a brand that people love, but it's the hard part is the admin stuff and the strategy around it. But that's kind of neat too. It's just different.

Same with gaming. People are like, I love video game, I love, right? Games. It's like, well, cool, but just so you know, like, you are in that— you have to— you're in the advertising business though.

And a beautifully designed product or a really novel product helps, right? Because Tinder was, was really novel and fun, and so they acquired more customers because it was fun to talk about. It was buzzworthy. It was controversial in some ways to just swipe on people's faces. Oh, how, how shallow is this generation? Whatever. So the product design definitely helps. And, uh, also if it's sticky, if it's actually a really great product or a really great game, Cool. That gives you more budget to acquire customers for, because you know, you keep them around for longer and you're going to make more money off them. But like, you got to know what business you're in and you got to know what the table stakes of success are. If you're a game, the table stakes of success are customer acquisition. Same with dating. For this train thing, it's about finance, you know, the financing of massive infrastructure. And that's the business you're in, not the cool seats and entertainment system and the headrests, you know.

Have you seen the movie Founder? It's about McDonald's.

I have, yeah.

And by the way, sometimes you hear the opposite. This happens a lot in the startup world. It's like you roll your eyes, somebody's there, they're in some shitty business and then they try to not be in there. Like, we're actually a tech company. It's like, no, you're not. You're a media company. You just happen to use technology or whatever, right? Like, people love to say that they're not in a shitty business and that they're in this great business. And just with as much or more frequency than people who happen to be in a great business and don't even realize it yet. And so you got to be wary for— that's why I said you got to know what business you're really in. And so you can't just make up that you're in the real estate business when you're fucking not. You're in this other business and you just have to like, you have to see the truth for what it is because lying to yourself doesn't really, doesn't really work.

Sometimes it does. I mean, sometimes they're— well, like, WeWork got away with it for a little while. Like, you could say, like, well, it kind of— it fell flat, but they— it could have gone either way, maybe.

Yeah, if it fell flat, I would count that as eventually the truth catches up with you, right?

Like, or like this new company Lemonade that went public. It's a— they're like, I want to get valued as a tech company, but it's like, well, you're insurance. You're still just like an insurance business. Like, Like people are like, or like I know that there is criticisms around Flexport. So Flexport is this huge company in Silicon Valley that everyone says is the greatest thing ever. And the guy who runs it is awesome and it totally might be the greatest thing ever. And what they do is you order like a whole bunch of stuff from China and you've got to ship that to America. They help you track your shipment if you're a business. So you can track your, track your shipping container and help with licensing or customs and all this, whatever. Anyway, they're like, we're this revolutionary thing. And I've read a bunch of comments in the trades, in like the shipping trades, and they're like, just so you guys know, we've been doing this forever, right? Like, we have all this technology already. Like, these guys are just— what they're doing is just no different than what we're doing. But Flexport has been like, we're doing it new. And I don't know the—

I don't know the truth, but I do know that I know the truth now. I've used other freight forwarders and now I've used Flexport. Flexport is fucking awesome and so much better than the others. It is so much better than the others.

Well, there, there's a little bit of the answer.

I vouch for it personally as a customer.

That from a customer, it's better. But these are the things that all the other people are saying. They're like in the comment section. So I only know what the commenters are saying. They're like, we've been doing this just so you know.

Like, it's true, they didn't invent the industry. But yeah, it's so annoying that like, like for example, somebody's going to be like, oh, Charter Cities trains, you know, these other guys have been doing this or, you know, people have tried this for a long time. It's like, yeah, I know, right? I said something about about SPACs on Twitter, I was like, hey, I want to talk to somebody who really is super knowledgeable about SPACs, which are these special purpose acquisition companies. And I said, I feel like there's a growing trend towards this. I want to know, you know, why would I invest in one? Why wouldn't I invest in one? And you know, how game-changing is this trend? And some, you know, 90% of the comments are great and helpful and inform me, and then 10% are like, dude, SPACs are nothing new, been around for a long time, nothing new happening here. It's like, people are so excited to be like, nothing new here, that they miss that there's actually new things. I'm not saying the whole fucking thing is new. I'm saying maybe it's just more common now.

Maybe it's a SPAC. I hear— I see people talking about it, and I don't entirely understand.

Okay, so example. So Chamath Palihapitiya created a SPAC. What it is, it's a blank check acquisition company. He raises like, let's say, $5 billion, $2 billion, something like that. I think he raised one or two.

Private institutions or public?

From, from institutional investors. That pump— that company is a public company. So it's a publicly listed entity that does nothing except for acquire companies.

But he acquires— but he gets the money from private people.

I believe initially he gets it from private, and then it's publicly listed, and then there's public shareholders as well. So you can buy into his SPAC. Okay, then it searches for a great private company that wants to fast-track to IPO. So instead of doing the roadshow and all that, the SPAC says, look, I can just acquire a minority stake or a majority stake, depends. But let's say I can acquire 40% of this company, and you'll be public tomorrow, and the SPAC will be renamed as what you are, and then you'll be liquid, and I'll take a fee, sort of like an alternative to the IPO process. It is an alternative to IPO process. So Chamath's company acquired Virgin Galactic, and that— it took Virgin Galactic public. And so they rebranded the SPAC as whatever— I forgot what the ticker is, but it's like SPACE or something like that.

And so now, now, do they have any revenue?

The SPAC is no revenue. No, it's just a holding company waiting to go buy a company.

So Virgin Galactic does—

When I hear this, I think to myself, this is stupid, this is a scam. And then I'm like, no, it's not a scam. This is awesome. They're winning. I mean, maybe some people think it's a scam, but it's like pretty cool. And I'm like down on myself that I'm not smart enough to entirely understand it.

Well, I didn't understand it fully either, and I'm sure my description here has some holes, but this is why I tweeted about it and why I'm going to bring a friend on to talk about SPACs because he knows a lot about it.

But my brain immediately goes to like, A, how on earth are these people smart enough to come up with these plans? B, how are they so bold to think that this is actually going to work?

And then people think of you that way. They're like, when I hear Sam talk about these, bring some of these ideas or talk about media or talk about whatever growth and you know, how easy it is to make money. People are like, how is Sam so smart? I only understand, you know, 30% of the gibberish he's saying. Um, how is he so bold that he just, you know, creates the Hustle, then, you know, buys this conference and creates this media brand and creates trends and then invests in his friends' companies and blah, blah, blah. Like people think you're very bold too. And it's just the same exact thing. Thing but in a different field. So it's not even at a different level, I don't think, personally. I just think it's a different field, and it's like a new language. Like, when you don't know the language, you feel kind of dumb because you're not understanding.

Yeah, I feel dumb.

All the terms. But like, that's okay. You've now known about it for 1 hour, uh, versus like, you know, the shit you know you've figured out over 10 years. And these guys have just done their 10 years on this.

So I, uh, I'm gonna bring this back to history because I'm a history fan. I'm on a kick, and I know not everyone likes it, but I'll make it quick. So I'm reading about Jay Gould. Do you know who Jay Whoever Gould is? Nope. So he's— he was one of the— if you look at like who are the richest people ever, he's like in the top 10 or 30. He was alive in the 1850s all the way up— he maybe died in 1890. He was like— he ran around with Vanderbilt and all these guys. And what he did was he found some loophole where this idea of watering down stock. And so what he did was he bought into the Erie Railroad and he somehow bought into the point where he didn't put up any money. Then what he did was he went down on like a Monday to the government in D.C., like to some officials, and he convinced them to change this law over 3 days that allowed him to issue new stock on a publicly traded company. But he didn't have to tell anyone. Somehow he got away with this. And so he issued all this new stock and Cornelius Vanderbilt bought $5 million worth of the stock, which back then, $5 million times 20, that's about what it's equivalent to now. And he took all the profits and then sold that like anyway, he just like made profits from thin air and it's kind of— it's definitely shady and sleazy, but he got really rich doing it. And what you're describing is like what I just read about last night with Jay Gould. I'm like, these guys who find these weird loopholes, part of me hates them because they're just like not creating true value for the world. Part of me is like, well, I got to— I got— you got to like appreciate the hustle and you got to respect the player who's just playing in the game, right? And it's just— I'm so fascinated by all these people. Like, what's his name? Chamath Chamath. Yeah. Chamath and Bill Ackman who are bold enough to come up with these like ludicrous ideas that a simpleton like me is like, I don't understand. So what widget are you selling and how are you making a profit? It's just so fascinating to people who are bold like this.

It is exciting and it is bold. I don't think, I wouldn't say they invented it because again, it's been happening, but who are, who rather different to do it at different scale. Yeah. It's different to do like most people in their industry, like Chamath is from the tech world, right? Like, No, no venture capitalist was doing this. He did it. It's sort of like, I really respect Chris Sacca because what he did when he was like, you know, wrote an angel investment check of $25K into Twitter and was not like super wealthy, like he needed that $25K to like come back.

Yeah, give the full story. So Chris Sacca is now this billionaire guy who's relatively young in his 40s.

Seen him on Shark Tank, you know, whatever.

He wears like a Western shirt. He's probably worth 2 or 3 or met more billions, right? And he worked at Google for a long time, and he didn't have that much money. Probably had like $100,000 or $200,000 to his name, which is a lot.

Like, like small deals, like hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars a time.

He's just hustling at night and then he's going to meetups and he's like, So he, to get to famously sort of get some credibility, he creates this name, this business card called like the Carlyle Group or something like that. Yeah.

Or like Sacka, Sacka and Brothers or something.

Yeah, it was the something group is like the Clydesdale Group or something. Carlyle or something like that. So he starts and people would be like, oh yeah, I've heard about you guys. You guys do good work. And so he starts, you know, like consulting under that banner and making thousands of dollars. But like, you know, $2 million hill to climb. So then he gets a job at Google pre-IPO, kind of like hustles his way around Google, ends up working on some cool projects at Google, like when they were buying all these data centers around the country under secret shell company names, because they didn't want Microsoft to realize how fast that Google was actually growing, but they needed the data centers. And so he gets to the point where Google IPOs, he makes, you know, a million or two bucks, he ends up paying off his loans. That he owed, he gets back to net worth zero. And he's like, you know, no better feeling in the world than when I had net worth zero. And so then he takes a little bit of money that he has left over from his job at Google and decides to angel invest in an ex-Google employee friend, Ev Williams, who's starting this thing called Odeo or Twitter or whatever. So anyways, he ends up as an angel investor in Twitter. He—

I think he gave him— I think he— I read he's like, I had like $75,000.

He put $25,000 in.

And I gave Twitter $25,000.

So it, it, it can be replicated again. So I'll tell you, uh, I know this guy named, well, I'm friends of a friend's with this guy, and they have this thing called GigaFund. If you go to gigafund.com, you can see it. What I'm going to say is all public, so I'm not like revealing anything. But from the looks of it, they only invest— they have this fund and they only invest in Elon Musk. So they basically put— they're one of the early monies into SpaceX. And I believe they're raising money just to invest into SpaceX. And, and it looks like on their portfolio it says SpaceX and then it says The Boring Company. Right. And so that's like all they're doing is like those— it looks like those two companies and that's the horse they're picking. They're like, we think that SpaceX is going to be like the greatest thing ever and we're just going to raise money.

And so they like— so Luke, Luke is ex-Founders Fund.

Well, he also— Luke is one of the co-founders of PayPal. So these aren't just like noobs. Yeah, they're, they're a big deal. But and this actually says it on TechCrunch, according to the Axios story, GigaFund will initially only focus on raising capital for SpaceX. So they just found a company they like and somehow they got in with Elon. Well, they got in with them because they work with them and all the money is for SpaceX. And that's kind of fun. That's kind of a funny thing.

I like that.

It's kind of incredible.

So Lance Armstrong, we had him on the podcast and I think before or after the podcast, he, he was an investor in Chris Sacca's fund and he said that he gave him $100,000 and that saved his family from all— he's like, when I went through all my lawsuits, I like was almost going broke and that saved— he's like, that, that pulls me through.

Okay. Business ideas. So I saw Josh Constantine, the kind of ex-TechCrunch guy. I saw him tweet this out. I thought it was a good prompt for startups. This is what he said specifically. There's 50 million creators across like YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, whatever. People whose job is to be a content creator. 50 million creators now. This is the fastest and largest growing small business. What do they need? And I think this is a great prompt for startup ideas. So I wanted to quickly brainstorm what comes to mind here.

So, so I'll start with one while you, while you have the, and I have the thread up.

I mean, this is, this is definitely a hard question. The boring one is that— sure, surely some smart people have figured this out— is, I mean, health. What do these people do for healthcare, I wonder?

Yeah, that's where my brain goes to. It's like, what are all the boring but super lucrative businesses like healthcare, insurance, lending, and try to build those for—

Abrey, are you, are you a freelancer at your company or are you full-time?

Freelancer now. I used to be full-time.

What do you do for healthcare?

Right now I technically don't even have healthcare. So I left like 6 months ago. I just took a bet like, hey, hopefully I don't get sick in the next few months. So I start doing something else.

So that works when you're 26 or 27 or whatever. But I wonder, that's what I— that's immediately where I went to. I'm like, what do you— yeah, healthcare is immediately where I go.

You're not on your parents anymore after 26. So yeah, that's like a big thing for people starting companies as well. You can't leave because you don't have health insurance.

Yeah. So that's immediately, Sean, where I go. I don't know what else. I mean, it's a good question. It's a— it is a pretty crazy stat. What I want to know is all these people— so like Substack is filling this void. They're giving something for creators. Yep. It's my opinion that a lot of these people on Substack are going to fizzle out in about a year when they're realizing, fuck, I got to do this shit like every fucking day.

Most of them— I'm not saying there's 50 million successful creators. I'm saying there's 50 million people trying to live the dream of become the next whatever on YouTube, on Twitch, on Substack, on podcasts.

I think whatever, you know, I, I love thinking of the tools that they need to actually get their job done. Two of my favorite ones, one's— they're both obvious. Figma. I like when I see that, I'm like, oh my God, someone totally should have thought about this. Like, I'm shocked that that's so late. And then another like one that's actually crazy simple. Is Canva. Do you know Canva?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love Canva. I use that all the time and I'm like, I can't believe this didn't exist beforehand. This is such a blatantly obvious need, right? And it's like, not like a comp— it doesn't appear to be complicated.

When these people, when you were starting your business, you have a thing that you're tinkering with, a project. How did you file your LLC?

Stripe Atlas.

Was that good?

It's a bit slow and I think it's a bit more expensive than it should be, but it's really easy. So yeah, I did. I've done it. I've done 3 Stripe Atlas companies because it's just the most convenient way to do it.

Hmm. I'm not sure. This is a great question that you actually need to like I need to like think about, but it is incredibly interesting. I don't know, I feel, I kind of feel like a little bit of a bum because I can't think of anything, but it is a great question. One thing I've learned from you is asking interesting questions actually changes how you think.

Yeah, yeah, forget the answer. I'd take a great question over a great answer any day because a great question can yield many, many interesting answers to explore. Okay, here's, here's another topic that I think is interesting. Cool company, cool company I just saw today, Daybreak Health. So it's a company that launched today. What these guys are doing is pretty simple. It's a mental health and therapy app for teens. So anxiety, depression, and other sort of, I don't even know how you would describe it. I don't know if it's called mental health conditions or what, but I know for sure anxiety and depression are sort of the two big ones that they're trying to tackle. Extremely prevalent amongst teens. I think like reported is like 20% or 30% of teens experience it. That's reported. So like, you know, let's say 40, 50% is the real number. 80% never get any help for it. And there's a stigma around it. And there's like all these like complications. And so these guys have kind of a telemedicine solution. So anyways, I think this is a good idea. Yeah.

I mean, put this on the list of things that is— that it's obviously going to be— it's obviously going to be successful. How successful, I don't know.

It's expensive though.

I think it'll get subsidized by either the federal government, by the states, or in some other way. I am fairly confident that over time this will become part of what's offered, just what's offered as a health solution for schools.

It's $365 a month, which comes out to be about $4,600 a year. Quite expensive, but that's how much this shit costs. Do you go to therapy?

I don't.

I have for a long time. I'm not right now, but it like normally it's where I go, and I don't think it's like a yuppie place. I think it's just like par for the course. It's $250 or no, $150, either $150 or $250 a session.

So this isn't like a new thing. Like there's Talkspace has been there, and they claim Talkspace is— they're, according to the articles, they're preparing for an IPO, right? It's just online therapy. They say they have 5,000 therapists on its platform and 1 million users.

Wow, I didn't realize they're preparing for IPO. I know Talkspace, there's 7 Cups of Tea or some shit like that. This one I know just targets teens. I don't know if the other guys like specifically brand themselves that way, but that's sort of, you know, who Talkspace's spokesperson is, right?

I think it's— is it them or is that BetterHelp? Is Mike Phelps, Michael Phelps.

Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Cause he, he kind of went through a dark period too.

It's BetterHelp, I think is Mike Phelps's thing. So these are big things. Um, I would wonder what the churn is for a customer. I think on the surface I'm like, oh, they never churn. But then I'm like, I bet you they do actually a lot.

Um, yeah, it's sort of like a dating app where in some ways the churn is a good thing. Like if you churn off a dating app, maybe it's cause you found somebody and you're not on a dating app anymore. It could be that if you turn off of a therapy app, you, you feel like you don't need the therapy anymore because you've sort of turned the corner. Although I'm not sure if that's how it works. Maybe it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing practice, never ends.

This is fascinating. BetterHelp claims to have like $70 or $80 million in revenue.

Yeah. So, so I'm not saying these guys are gonna be the leader. I just like that they're focused on teens. And I think that I also, you know, the, the unproven part is will will this become baked in as a perk for— as a service available to students that's funded by somebody else?

Have you studied Gen Z at all? Like, um, I went to— I sound like an old man— I went to conferences and they had discussions on Gen Z, and like the stats were that they're— to me it was shockingly depressed, right? Shockingly. And good for this business, they're super open-minded. So like, like when I was a kid, if you said you went to therapy, like, I mean, to be crude, someone be like, what are you, gay? Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, you're like, what are you, like, fucking gay? Like, that's what people would say, right? When you're 12 years old.

Yeah, exactly. Like 20 years ago.

Now I don't think that that's even close to a thing. Like, I don't even think anyone would like, you know, I don't think they would say that shit to you.

Yeah. Now it's like a status symbol in Silicon Valley. It's like if you're not going to therapy, like, oh, it's like not— you don't go to the gym.

Interesting. Well, like, when we were a kid, like, that's what we say. You're like, dude, don't be gay. Like, that's what they say. And I was talking to some nephews and I was like, do you guys ever like call each other gay? They're like, well, if they're— if someone's gay, I'm like, yeah, but like, do you make fun of someone and call someone gay? They're like, you mean because they like are homosexual? I'm like, yeah. They're like, why would we ever do that? And I was like, nice, you guys are different.

I remember the first time, uh, yeah, when I was 10, 12, that was like just part of the slang. I remember the first time I said it and somebody was like, that's not cool. It was a— I don't know if I ever told you this. When I was in middle school, I was in a movie. I was in two movies, actually. And they're like these small, kind of like Indian American movies. They're like in English, but they're like all Indian cast. They're about Indian stories or whatever. So the guy Kal Penn, who ended up being Harold and Kumar, he's Kumar. So he was my older brother in the movies.

And so—

no way. And so we were hanging out and I was like, oh my God, that's so gay. And again, I'm 12-year-old kid. And he was like, he's like, you know, that, that's not cool to say that. Like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't say that. Here's why. Blah, blah, blah. He started telling me. And I just remember being like, what is this guy talking about? Like, everybody says this. And he was like, you know, from LA. I'm living in Texas at the time. So like, it took like a decade for the message to get from New York and LA where people probably realized early on like, this is this kind of messed up to like get to Texas where I was at. Cause I remember literally it was 10 years. I remember that was one isolated incident and then it's like 8 more years I said it. And then finally I was like, oh, oh yeah. Okay. All right. Uh, yeah, my bad. Sorry about that. Didn't realize what I was doing.

Yeah. I, that's what I had the, I had that feeling when I, when I was talking to like our nephews, I was like, so you guys don't ever say that? I'm like, that's crazy. You're so open-minded and like, health, like kind of, kind of healthy and more mature. So I definitely learned that. I'm like, wait, you don't— so like, you won't make fun of him for like, why would you ever— like, what's wrong with being gay? I'm like, yeah, you're right. But that's just not how we— that's just, we would say that word, right?

It's actually funny because it's not only that saying, calling something gay when what you're really trying to say is that's weird, that's stupid, that's lame, or something, whatever. It's not only that that phrase is like revealed to be really dumb and hurtful and all that stuff, but all the activities that you were talking about as gay also became totally normal, mainstream, healthy, good behaviors. It's like, yeah, like meditation, yoga, yoga, like being a vegetarian or vegan.

It's like, like, what are you, a gay monk?

Right? Like, like sharing your feelings. It's like, well, having a good time.

Yeah, I am a gay monk. That's awesome. I guess we'll end there.

Yeah, let's start a podcast on this. Cool.