Tech Startup Ideas for the Farmer Economy

So the background is this, this guy named Kevin Van Trump. He is probably in his 50s, late, mid to late 50s. And he basically, I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities, but he's got a relatively thick Southern accent. Right. So he goes to Chicago. He probably makes 8 figures trading commodities. So he, like, sounds like this country bumpkin farmer, but like, you know, he's trading like corn futures and shit like that. Makes a lot of money. Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day at this point.

Like 17 years he's done that.

Is it 17 years?

Something like that.

It's like some almost 20 years he's been doing this every day and it makes like something like in the world of $20 million a year in subscription revenue. Just to read more and more.

I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now.

So I've done calls with him and I'm just— and this guy, he's like, oh, hey, check this song, bitch, out. Like, that's what he'll say.

Yeah.

Okay, so I haven't talked to you in like 2 weeks. You had COVID.

Yeah, I had— I can't even explain what I had. I would apologize because I missed so many recordings, but in a way you gave me COVID because I got COVID because I went to this conference, which is, you know, a decision I made. I didn't really— honestly, I wasn't really thinking about it. COVID has just been so present that I wasn't really like— I didn't do the math of like, you know, if I go on a plane and I go to a conference with 2,000 people, what's going to happen?. And so sure enough, I go to this conference that Sam hooks me up with. He's like, Sam's like, hey, this conference is amazing. It's called PharmCon. These guys who've run it, there's super cool story. You know, it's awesome. And I was like, oh, I'm in.

And I was going to go.

And I land and I'm like, yo, I'm here, baby. Let's do this. And Sam's like, oh, I didn't go, dude. I didn't want to get COVID.

Well, I can't, I canceled like last minute. I, I dude, like I thought that you knew that I canceled, but how would I know that? Because we, We had talked about you going and we hadn't said, I don't know, we had not really mentioned like, I'll see you there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I thought you knew I canceled, so I felt horrible. But like a week or two prior to, that's like when Omnicron and all this stuff happened. And it's a farmer's conference in Kansas City. You know, I'm from Missouri. And I was like, ooh, I think that COVID will be there. And I don't know if I want to.

COVID was for sure there. It was the main attendee. The main keynote speaker. Um, dude, we walked in. So I walk in, Ben went with me. And so, um, we go in and me and Ben are literally the only two people in the room with a mask. And there's like 2,000 people in there. And I was like, ah, shit. I didn't even really think about it. And I was like, oh fuck, it's here. Um, and I was like, well, the odds of me getting there are pretty high, but I'm now here. So I gotta just make the most of it. So anyways, basically I go to this conference. Uh, and everything that could happen to get COVID happened, meaning like, it's like, uh, conferences in this ballroom. Great. It's 2,000 people in one room.

All right.

That's not so good. They don't have masks on.

Okay.

Next thing that happened, I go to the gym in between, uh, like the sessions where me and Ben want to get a workout in. We go, we meet this guy, we're making small talk and we're like, oh, you're here for the conference? He's like, no, I'm just quarantining here. Uh, my girlfriend has COVID, so I'm here. I was like, ah, bro, I just shook your hand. And we were, what am I doing? And so then this guy, my gym buddies got COVID. I was like, oh great. And then I get on the plane finally to come back. I'm like, all right, I think I might've made it out unscathed. I don't know. I'm feeling okay. Plane gets stuck on the runway for 3 hours. So I'm on a, on a plane in a closed tube with a bunch of other people for 3 hours. I was like, all right, it's over. I got COVID. And sure enough, I get home and, uh, 2 days later I get COVID. Now the dumb thing I didn't do was I didn't quarantine right away, which I should have just done. I should have just said, hey, even if I'm not feeling anything, I've been around a bunch of people, I should just like leave. But I was like, look, I just left my wife at home with the two babies for like, you know, 4 days. I should come back and help. And in trying to help, I ended up giving my wife COVID. Then we gave both our babies COVID. And so for the last 10 days, it's just been someone in my house has COVID at any given time. Um, and I've just been literally— I haven't gone to a computer, I haven't done anything.

I've just been—

get it—

taking care of it.

Ben did not get it. I think Ben had it like a month ago, so he somehow came out unscathed.

Did Sully get it?

He didn't go. He didn't end up going. He flaked the night of and was like, actually, like, it's super inconvenient to get there. I have to like change my flight, has like a stopover. Fuck this, I'm not going. We'll do something else.

So was it in you? But you were— even though you're vaccinated, you got sick.

I got pretty— I got really sick. Yeah, I got really sick for 3 days. So let me tell you about my COVID experience. I, I got really sick for 3 days, but it's just the flu with a side dose of paranoia because it's like, oh, this ain't the flu. This is, this is COVID. And so definitely, you know, fever, all that good stuff, whatever. Then the babies, everybody had kind of the same thing. But the bad thing is like, I don't know how you are, but I'm like a huge baby when I get sick.

Me too.

And my wife is like, you know, never gets sick. She's like one of those people just like never gets a cold. Never has a runny nose, nothing. And so even with COVID she was like, she fought it off pretty good. It was like pretty mild, you know, she was still doing—

I think women are generally tougher, particularly moms are tougher when it comes to that stuff.

Totally. But the hard part is when we both get the same thing and I go down like a, you know, bag of bricks and she's still complaining. Yeah, she's just like, what is this? Why are you— why do you need so much sleep right now? I'm like, I just can't explain. In fact, I saw this meme that was so perfect. He goes, is this guy? He goes, he goes, you know, it's so good that women have to give birth and go through labor because now they understand what happens when a man gets a cold. And that's how it is. I'm a huge baby about it and she like toughed it out, no problem. So that was kind of embarrassing.

Did, um, so how many people, how many full-time employees work at your, your company? The, the D2C company, maybe like 7, 8 full-time. And these in America, Americans full-time. And you, and you like are running—

not all, not all Americans, but, but, you know, people who this is their main job, they work full-time.

And when you—

not accounting the warehouse staff.

And do you like do weekly meetings with them and run it like a company, or is it really Sean? It's run like Sean. Like very autonomous, everything done via Slack.

That's how much time does your wife spend on the company?

Spends a good amount of time. Like she's, she, you know, she's a stay-at-home mom, I guess, like first job because like so during the day she doesn't really work on it too much, just kind of like on her phone in between, you know, just like watching the baby. But then at night she basically works from 10 p.m. when the babies are finally knocked out to 2 or 3 AM pretty much every night. She does that and she works on the business and does the designs and all that stuff.

So when you guys are both sick, how bad—

like, who's— we did no work. You just—

we just like— you just have a, a, a person who you trust and you say, just handle it.

Yeah, we're like, you know, just you do what you can do and then whatever doesn't get done doesn't get done. Like, we're not going to worry about it. We're not going to add a stress to our life that like says this week we also have to, you know, work. It's just impossible.

So let's talk about this conference for a second because I have been telling you about this guy for a long time and I think that you, you humored me and the audience has humored me and they've like, oh, that sounds neat. But when you got to meet him, did you understand what I was saying?

Dude, this guy's amazing. This guy is amazing and what he's built is amazing. So I wanna go through, I have a bunch of thoughts, but let's start with, with them. Okay. So conference called PharmCon and the family is called the Van Trump family. That's their, that's their name. So it's Kevin Van Trump and Jordan Van Trump. Uh, that's like the two kind of like core principals. That's the father and son. And, uh, I'm just going to describe what happened when I got there. It wasn't like a normal conference. So a couple unusual things. I go in and there's a normal stage, like a conference, you know, like they got that fricking wallpaper behind it. That's like every sponsor's logo on step and repeat banner. Okay, cool. That everything's normal. But the main speaker, Kevin Van Trump, is sitting not at, uh, not in a chair. He's got this like mahogany desk that was put onto the, onto the stage, and he's sitting in it. He looks like a judge of a courtroom. So he's got this humongous like oak wood table that he's sitting behind in his thing, and he's got a gavel literally, and he's talking into the mic, and he It's like a freeform agenda. So he'll be like, like he would just say something that he'd be like, I walked in and he's like, yeah, that's why I don't hire any Ivy Leaguers. You know, Ivy Leaguers, here's the problem with Ivy Leaguers. And he'll just go on a rant. There's like 5 panelists that are sitting there and then he'll just like tell this story and the crowd loves him. I loved him. He is an amazing charismatic speaker who is smart and very real. And he's very, he's just a very good speaker. Like his style was so likable. I couldn't, I can't explain.

So the background is this, this guy named Kevin Van Trump. This is all from memory. I met him 4 or 5 years ago at a conference. And since then we, I've kind of brought him into our circle of friends. He is probably in his 50s, late, mid to late 50s. And he basically, I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities. But he's got a relatively thick Southern accent. Kansas City, Missouri isn't really considered the South, but it can be pretty country. So I don't know where he's from. So he goes to Chicago, he probably makes 8 figures trading commodities. So he like sounds like this country bumpkin farmer, but like, you know, he's trading like corn futures and shit like that and makes a lot of money. Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day at this point.

For like 17 years he's done that.

Is it 17 years?

Something like that. It's like some almost 20 years he's been doing this every day.

And it makes like something like in the world of $20 million a year in subscription revenue just to read more and more.

I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now.

So I've done calls with him and I'm just— and this guy who's like, oh, hey, check this son of a bitch out. Like, that's what he'll say. And he's like, he's like pointing at his new Picasso. So I've done video calls with him and he's got like this like beautiful like chopper in the background, like a fancy customized motorcycle. He goes, oh, we just picked up this home bitch. We just got this home bitch the other day. We really love the Picassos. And you like— that's how he talks. And he's— he now— his family, uh, Kevin or Jordan, his younger son, runs like this other business. But in this, the commodities world, this like farming world, they are gods. And I've met a bunch of people who like them and they're like New York-ish type folks who have like $50, $100 million and are like traders, and they like revere him and they love him, dude.

So, so have you read any of his newsletters?

They're so good. Yeah, must pay subscribers first.

They're like, you know, it's like, it's like a 20-page PDF, so it's like not even like a, a short thing, it's like a long thing. And it's like he basically is writing about what he thinks is going on, so, uh, in the market. So he'll be like, you know, Bean Futures, or you you know, rice, corn, these different commodities. He's talking about what's going on is really important for people in agriculture because if you're a farmer and you're making, you're growing corn, you got to decide, do I hold this corn and try to sell it myself? Do I need to take on some insurance in case the price of corn drops? And, um, should I sell, you know, all of my corn, you know, in these futures, in this futures market? Or should I, you know, should I hedge, but should I take a hedged position against what I'm producing? And so you have to decide what you're going to do with your crop. That is your— like, for most people, investing is this like side thing. It's like you do your job that earns you your money, your business earns you your money, and then you invest in the stock market and whatever. They're two separated things. For a farmer, these are not separated. This is part of the like core thing of what you do is basically managing your risk.

And these aren't guys that have like a farm that like they just like get by. These are like folks that like supply the corn to like McDonald's. And we're talking like they have turnover of $20, $30, $50 million a year.

Like there's that. Yeah. He's like, you know, you'll meet the guy who makes all the rice for Chipotle. It's like, whoa, that's crazy. That's crazy volume. And then I would meet people who were like what you call gentlemen farmers. They're basically people who don't need to farm. They just grew up that way. And they're like, yeah, my family, I like living on a farm. I want my family to have a farm. I farm on my weekends and nights. Like there's one guy, he's a CEO of a large company and he was just farming for fun, you know, nights and weekends. And that's why he was, you know, like there. And it was like such a bad use of like time. But it's not, it's a, it's not a bad use of time because it's a hobby. It's a pleasurable thing for him. What this manual work is like how he relaxes.

How many people were there?

And it's really ugly. Have you seen it? It's like, it's not mobile friendly. It's just a PDF and it's like 3,000 words. With like PowerPoint, uh, it's all substance over style.

Uh, there's a few memes in there, which I like. Uh, it's like, you know, just some, here's some jokes. Um, and I think that's very on brand.

It is good. The writing's great.

The writing is really great. Uh, and the insights obviously matter. Otherwise people wouldn't be paying for this thing, right? They're genuinely getting value. And at the conference, he's a god, dude. People, people love this guy. They, they respect his kind of like knowledge and his content. And then they just really like him because again, he would say— I literally wrote down verbatim things that he was saying because I was like, this is just like, this is so entertaining. Like, for example, I'm just going to read you a couple of quotes that he was saying. So he's like, I hate hiring Ivy Leaguers because they're too afraid of failure. He's like, they don't— they've done so well their whole life. They're not— they're not used to looking wrong or looking silly, you know. Go try NFTs. Go, go, go. Put your hands on the wheel. Go get— go, go fall. Go scrape your knee. He's like, that's how I grew up. He's like, my dad would take us in the car. He said, no, no seat belts, baby. That's how we roll. He's like, he's like, we're gonna take some risks. We're gonna get skinned up. We're gonna break some bones. We're gonna fall off the bike. He's like, that's how you got to treat your kids. Even if they're smart kids, you got to— he's like, because one of the big concerns is how do you get your kid— you're, you're 60 maybe now, and you got your farm, your kids 30. They don't want to take over the farm, or they don't— maybe they want to, but they don't know how to do anything. And so he's like He's like, you got to segment off a portion of the farm, let them fail, but let them have their skin in the game. Um, he's like, you know, I want to have kids that don't melt down when the rug gets pulled. I want to be able to go to them and say, hey, things, things have changed, we're changing tonight. And he's just like going on this rant. And dude, I'm sitting there in the crowd and I'm like, WorldStar! I'm like, this is, this is such a hype monologue. And it had nothing to do with whatever they were talking about, like bean futures, 5 seconds before that. But he would frequently go on these, and every time I'm just nodding my head.

I'm like, preach.

I loved it. What? All right. So you have a list of a bunch of shit that you've learned here. Let's just rattle them off. I found them to be all wildly interesting.

Let's do a couple of things. So the rest of his business. So he tells me, so he goes, I'm doing—

I know for sure his business was doing in the $25 million range years ago.

Right. So that's— so there's the newsletter component. Yeah.

Then he's like, well, you know, this is, by the way, I think he's right.

Like, I think it is. I like what someone was talking about, which emails— like, it's so raw. I think he uses Salesforce to send it out, right? Like, that's his email service provider. Like, it's pretty raw.

And he's like, uniforms. What's that? Is that— are they making uniforms or they're just making licensed merchandise? So like, I think it's John Deere. They're just printing it for them.

You know, agri— like the— my parents are work in this industry, and that's why I like this guy is because I got to know him, is like the thing that people like, guys like you and me and people listening to this, we're these tech folks and we dismiss this, but like literally everyone in America has an onion in their home or a product made of an onion.

Right.

And you're going to buy it multiple times a week. Um, that's what my dad does. My dad sells onions. And I remember people, I would make fun of him and he's like, go look in your cabinet. You have stuff that I have owned at one point, I bet. And, uh, and so it's not as small as we think.

Oh, I mean, obviously it's not like, for example, the, uh, the founder of Square, this guy, Jim McKelvey. I wanna talk about him too. He's the, he was the keynote speaker. So he comes on the stage. He was also a very good speaker. I'm, I'm, and I, I kind of have a high bar for that kind of thing, but he's, he was very impressive. And he gets on stage. The very first thing he says is, um, just wanna say thank you to everybody in this room for feeding my family. You know, it's like, but it's just, it's like such an obvious thing. But I say, yeah, of course.

Where?

All the shit we eat comes from somewhere. And in my mind, this is going to sound super dumb and ignorant, but it's true, which is like before this conference, I really spent 0% of my time thinking about where the heck the food comes, where the heck food comes.

And if you thought of a farmer, you probably had stupid stereotypes of like dumb idiots.

For sure. I was like, oh, and going into this, I was like, I'm going to go meet a bunch of hillbilly, like rednecks basically.

And they do talk like that. I'm from there. They definitely will talk like that, but they like are wearing like a $50,000 Rolex.

Dude, now, now, okay, so you've, you've not made fun of me, but tease me a little bit about like loving trucks and farmers. Now, do you understand why I think it's so cool? Like, these guys are sophisticated and everything, but like the people you and I hang out with in our, in our coastal, coastal cities, they don't give a fuck about these folks. And I'm like, man, if you got to make those collide and be awesome, right?

And so a couple, a couple things like on that note. So when I was at one of the dinners, they were talking about, uh, it was the Who's the Customer dinner. They were, they're talking about something and they, and something came up. They go, uh, you know how long, he's like, how long we've been hearing about Whole Foods and, uh, you know, plant-based this and oat milk that. He's like, this is still tiny fringe shit. He goes, America eats cornbread and milk at scale. This is what America wants. They need how much, how much volume is the Whole Foods? And then I'm thinking Dude, in my bubble, everybody eats like that. Everybody eats the fringe shit. So it was just awareness of like two things. One is like in the future, maybe what we're doing ends up becoming more mainstream. I do believe that. But how not it is, is crazy. The scale, the difference in scale of just like, you know, corn versus, you know, the non-whole foods versus Whole Foods is like to them Whole Foods was this rounding error. And I thought that was hilarious because to me it's like, you know, I, that's like, I don't know where I shop every day. It's, it's the main thing. And again, all this is going to sound really like dumb, but, uh, I'm dumb. That's, I guess, the answer. When I was there, I was learning how dumb I was about everything. Um, there was so many different things like that that I was learning. Can I just rattle off a couple other things? Okay.

So Jonathan, write us in the chat. Is this, is this— I could talk about this all day. I think this is the coolest shit ever.

And awesome. It's in my opinion, Rally Road has one of the best apps I've seen in like the last 2 or 3 years.

Um, so you know how I used to work for the show American Pickers, right? Do you, do you, do you— I don't— you were not in the market for that because you were in, uh, were you in Australia at the time? Whatever. But you, if, if, if the show was around now, you wouldn't watch it. You don't fit that, that bill. But do you know that that show American— so for those listening, I used to work for the show American Pickers, and it's basically like Pawn Stars. We'd go out—

what did you do for them?

But it's not really a bank. It's— they're partnering with another bank and they just layer their branding on top of that bank.

They're on top. Exactly. But they've done really well. They're now valued over $1 billion. You know, this guy who built it, Imad, he's kind of in our friends group.

He's awesome.

And, you know, Yeah, he's great. He came on the pod. So, uh, you know, so, so Mercury was bank for tech startups and then Brex was Visa for tech startups and same thing, not, you know, they have built on top of the Visa rails or the MasterCard rails or whatever, but it's just a credit card for startups and it was taking advantage of that. Like, hey, we understand startups. So like, for example, you might be a startup that's raised $10 million of venture capital, but your credit card limit is $5,000 because the bank's like, dude, you have no income, no history, no nothing, no credit. Like, you know, we can't give you money. And there's like, dude, I just raised $10 million. I have the money in the bank.

Like, in this— they won't cap points on ad spend because they know that startups spend most of their money on ad spend.

Exactly. Or things like, you know, just the fact like, hey, you can fill out the application online, you don't have to talk to a human, and it'll be like sent to you in 2 days. Or like, you know, you want this to like easily autofill online. Like, there's just little stuff that makes it like work well for that.

So Mercury for farmers on board.

Brex became a multi-billion dollar thing. Mercury did. And I've been, I've now invested in versions of either Mercury or Brex for teenagers, for teens in India, for businesses in India, for Canadians. Creators.

Creators is the one that everyone likes.

For creators.

I did that one. Not creators. Make this for food creators. This, it would be, it'd be so much better to do this. Creators. Yeah. It'd be, yeah. It's gonna be creators. That's what we call farmers. We're gonna, that's what we call farmers.

We're gonna rebrand farming as the creator economy. They're just creating food.

Yeah. Yeah. Seed creators. Um, dude, it's so much— that would be such a better company.

And they're spending a lot of money, right? Cause like the, all of it, the equipment, the, like, you know, the, the, the fertilizers, these are like huge bulk purchases.

My cousins, I have an aunt and cousin who it's a mom and son. They have 1,500 acres with like 1,000 cattle or so. And I've gone out and hung out with them. And so they basically raise bulls to It's called bucking bulls. So like at a rodeo, the bull that is like, it's called that, that bull is bucking. And at a rodeo, the guy, the cowboy who stays on wins money. And the bull that bucks the hardest wins money. And you can also make money by, if you have a really good bucking bull, you get money by getting its semen out there. And all the females they kill and turn into beef and they make a living doing this. They're, I don't, they're probably millionaires, but They are fucking hard workers. And when they walk around places, like during a workday, because like when you're a farmer, you're constantly driving to get feed, whatever, they'll have 20 G's on them in cash. Wow. Like they just have just like fat loads of like— you just need— or like when they go to the rodeo, rappers and farmers, dude, when— dude, when they go to the rodeo, I've seen them, they'd have like a— they've had like 10 grand on them because they gotta like buy this while they're there. They gotta do this, they gotta make their bet. Anyway, these farmers have fuckloads of cash because they are— they're still doing stuff with cash. So like, this is an interesting—

it's a great market. Yeah. With, uh, the other one, if, uh, automation. So I think the number one thing that was on everybody's mind is automation. How do we— how do we get more automation? So I think from the beginning technology has helped farms, which is like, you know, before there was tractors everything was like, you know, horse pulled, you know, and or whatever. And then tractors come out, it becomes a big deal, and John Deere is trying to do self-driving tractors and Everybody's trying to do automation. And so I think if you're sitting at MIT or you're at Carnegie Mellon and you're in some robotics lab and you're like, okay, I can keep making like, you know, things that I understand that are from, you know, this gadget that like turns off my light switch in my room because I don't like to get up once I lay down. Yeah. So that's what I'm going to do. It's like, dude, instead go to a farm for like 3 weeks and just watch what's going on. And then from there, come up with the automations and stuff you want to pull.

I've invested in a few companies in that space. Um, so it's automations and precision agriculture, they call it. So, um, which I, I think automation falls under precision agriculture. That's like the, the term, I believe. And, uh, it's incredibly interesting. So like you talk about like automated car, autonomous cars, autonomous tractors is incredibly intriguing, right?

And there's also like sensors. So just like soil quality is like the soil health is like one of the most important things. If your soil health is bad, your crop is fucked. And so just being able to come up with models where you can go put sensors in the ground and get real-time soil health data, um, and alert people, hey, this plot in this area is not going to grow very well because of this. Uh, that also seemed like a big deal. So those are some ideas. The last one is family succession planning. So One of the biggest things was like, how do you pass down your farm? Um, because if your kids don't want to do it, and increasingly, you know, kids don't want to do it, um, what the heck are you going to do with this farm? Uh, and so there's like places that you can sell farms. So I think that was one opportunity. There's creating your estate, your will, and all that stuff. There's renting it out to other people. There was just a whole bunch of stuff around, okay, if billions of dollars of farms is going to trade hands in the next, like, 10 years, who's gonna be in the middle of that?

Uh, and I think working with— remember one, we had one episode where we talked about picking your customer and we were talking about this company, UserVoice or UserTesting. Which one did your mom work for?

UserTesting.

And I was like, I think that's so cool because it gives people like your mom, like moms who raised kids and don't, can't have full-time jobs, it gives them work. That's admirable. That's exciting. That's incredibly motivating. I think you could, I would easily put farmers in that same situation., or in that same category where it would be really exciting and fun to work with those guys.

So it sounds like this conference is badass. You, you, it changed your perspective on some stuff.

You don't have to do anything. You know that I met Kevin. I spoke at a conference and I was just hanging out in the lobby and Kevin Van Trump came up to me. And he was wearing cowboy boots and a Ramones t-shirt. And I thought that he was like a weirdo. Like, I did think that he was legit, but he was like talking like a big game. Not like bragging, but kind of like he told me his business and he had— I could tell, like, $100,000 watch on. And I was like, wait, you're telling me? He's like, yeah, I got 20,000 subscribers. I was like, oh, sick. You guys make money through ads? He goes, oh no, paid subscription. I was like, wait, who are you? So I—

he remembered you. He gave a great intro when he was introducing me. He's like, I met this guy, Sam. He used to work for American Pickers and oh, and he just gave, he told the whole conference about you and how great you were.

It was awesome. And so anyway, I met Kevin at a conference, which now you've been brought into the fold. This is gonna influence you in some capacity. You're gonna bring other people into the fold. That's why conferences are cool.

Can we, um, are we allowed to talk about—

I think so.

Why not? All right, let's talk about— so do you want to give the bat—

we might want to bleep out his name, so let's, let's bleep out his name.

Just—

well, let's talk about this.

Well, let's let— we'll ask him after this, but all right. We, um, he, there's this guy named, I didn't really know much about him. Somehow I got brought into this group chat that you're in and in a weird way I feel like I'm good friends with them now, even though we've only texted. Yeah. He, uh, uh, how does he talk about what happened over the weekend about this app?

Okay. So, um, so basically here's his short story. He's built a couple of like products, honestly never really had a big hit. Um, him and his friends have been working on— they were working on a startup, or they're working as a startup for a number of years, and they were just grinding, running test after test, and they were really building a lot of stuff in the social space. So he learned a lot of like kind of the— he like cut his teeth in trying to build the next Twitter, next TikTok, next whatever, right? And the, the, they were about to fail. The last thing they built, the Hail Mary, was they were like, oh, let's just create this like kind of like quiz app, this like superlatives app where it's like, oh, who at your high school is most likely to, you know, become a professional dancer or like, you know, go to jail or whatever. And, um, it goes viral and it's called TBH and it goes viral. It hits like number one in the app store. Cause this, the flow was basically you, you open the app, you start answering these questions about your friends. They would text your friends being like, hey, Sean said you're most likely to X, click here to see what else he said. I was like, oh dude, I'm going to click that. And then you click that and then it would go on. Something, something along those lines. So TBH goes viral. Facebook ends up buying it. Smart move by— kind of knew this thing doesn't have like, you know, legs to actually be the next hit social app, but it made them like, you know, a good—

not like I don't think it sold for what it was reported. Yes.

Reported as like $100 million, I think.

But it made, you know, a lifetime of money.

Yeah, exactly. So these guys, they pull it off in the end, right? So they went from like literally they were about to shut it down. He's like, ah, fuck it, let's just launch this last thing. And, and that thing hits. So then he goes to Facebook. He stays there for like fucking 4, full 4 years. So he hits the full vest and he's, he the whole time, I don't know, he's probably bored and he's just on Twitter and he's like, he's what people call shitposting, which is basically like, you know, just posting jokes on Twitter and oftentimes making fun of the tech industry. So making fun of the stuff that people in the tech industry are doing and So anyways, you know, people like to follow him because he's funny. So over the weekend, so he basically, he tweeted something out last week that was like, hey, I'm working on, I'm going to work on a new project. I finally like left Facebook or whatever. Um, I'm working on a new project. I want to work with a designer. Uh, if like I'm looking for a founding designer, if you want to like, you know, build something amazing, work with a team that's built, you know, built apps, blah, blah, blah. Uh, you know, DM me something along those lines.

And when he quit and announced that he was quitting at Facebook, it said I've been at Facebook. They bought my app. I've been there for 4 years. Um, it really was just, um, there was a lot happened and I want to give a thread on everything that I learned. And he, and, and it pointed down, down, like the down emoji. And there was no other thread.

That was nothing there.

Yeah.

And it was hilarious. Here's what I learned my 4 years of Facebook, nothing. Um, and so yeah, that was hilarious. And so people were like, oh, people generally are excited about next to your thing. Especially all the kind of like venture investors, angel investors, this is kind of the entrepreneur you like to back, which is somebody who you think is smart, who is a serial entrepreneur, so not their first rodeo, but also hasn't had the big win, so they still have a huge chip on their shoulder and want to, want to make it big. So that's like a great entrepreneur to invest in, and he's pretty well networked and pretty well respected, so people want to invest in it. So he tweets that thing out looking for a designer, and then somebody else said, uh, somebody two days later just tweets like I saw, uh, you know, a mockup of new app, like, holy shit, it's gonna like change everything. And this guy also is like a shitposter. This guy, uh, I think his handle's like another Cohen or something like that. And, um, and by the way, you've seen the, the image that he's talking about. He's posted it in our, in our text thread before about like, you know, here's an idea. Like I might make this thing.

And if I remember correctly, it wasn't even like, it's not a business.

It's like, oh, it's like a, it's just like a silly idea.

And it's like high level ideas. Still, he's still ideating. He doesn't need to Yeah.

So anyways, people then start memeing that guy. They're like, I just saw a new app, um, a new app for the first time. And you know, this wart that I've had on my toe for years just went away. And like, you know, the next person would be like, you know, uh, I showed it to 8 children who were starving and now they're, you know, they're not hungry anymore. And so this goes viral as a, uh, as like a meme on Twitter. I'm going to read you some of them that were there, the good ones.

They were great. They were great.

Let's see.

Um, there was a guy saying like, we're happy to announce that it was Andrew Chen. We're happy to announce that we just led a $100 million round into new app, right?

I can't believe they're extending. Um, I just got to a session with my therapist. She ended up asking me for tips on how to get allocation into new company. And so it just became this like meme in the tech industry. And then a lot of people who were seeing it like, what's this app? And so, and by the way, this, this idea, this like kind of like what quote unquote growth hack, it was accidental, A, but B, really effective. And it drummed up a bunch of interest and a bunch of hype around what this new app could be.

And so what he did was he created an NFT with like a, I think he sold 69. He's got, oh my God. He's got this really stupid like image for his Twitter picture, but it's kind of like funny. Uh, and he made different Twitter images based off of his and 69 of them. And if you bought one, you get early access as a beta user to his app, right?

I don't know. Was that the promise? I didn't know.

That's the promise. Look at the floor price of what those are.

So here's what I want to ask you. I want to ask you a question because you have done something similar. I didn't know before you and I, you introduced me to him. I knew him as like a guy who built an app, but it seems like people revere him. Like they consider him an expert on consumer apps, which not saying that he isn't. He certainly is pretty successful, it seems.

But also, what the fuck?

But, but also like his reputation, like, is so big where it's like, yeah, is anyone that good? That's kind of what I'm going to get. Yeah. And you've done a good job of that as well, of creating this like mystique. Uh, almost out of nothing, right? Not that like you weren't successful ahead of time, but like you've done a really good job of building a brand.

Call it what I sold my startup for less than what my investors had put in. Now, you know, the way it worked, you know, the team still did well and I made good money off of it, but like, that's not, that's the, that's not the definition of a successful business.

Because there's a lot of people that have sold their companies for a lot of money. We have a, we have a handful of buddies that are like uber rich, no one fucking knows who they are. And like, even if they told you that what they did, you'd have to like, they'd have to beg to speak at a conference. Whereas guys like you, you've got like The Daily Show reaching out to you. You've got celebrities reaching out to you who want to like get on board with you. And then it's done the same thing.

Yeah. Cause you can make it sound good. I could say I sold my, sold my last startup to Amazon. Yeah. Technically I did. Technically I made money, but like, oh, that's not it. That doesn't make it a, like a huge success. You know, it doesn't make me like a thought leader.

I don't think that's the right way to say it because you're acting like you're tricking people 'cause you have never tricked anyone ever and I don't think has either. But what you've done is you've both done this really good job of creating a little bit of mystique about, and what I wanna know is, you can use the example and then you, how does someone, I guess I'm asking for myself because how do you create so much of this brand equity like you guys have?

Well, I think in both cases it's basically you put out, you put your thoughts on blast. So, you know, they're the real answer. And by the way, I say that not to make fun of the shit app. I think it did sell for a profit. So good for them. I'm saying, I know that I've gotten disproportionate credit for my track record of success when in reality, like the best thing I've built is this D2C company that I don't tell anybody the name of. That's the profitable business that's doing 8 figures a year. But like, that's not actually why people my reputation came before that. So, you know, that's kind of weird, right? So where does the reputation actually come from? It comes from two things. One is you meet people in real life. So like you go meet, you know, the investors at these different big funds or, uh, CEOs at different companies. And when they're talking to you, they're making an independent assessment of your, your caliber, your based on your thoughts. All right. So, so first it's like a hand-to-hand combat thing. You meet a bunch of people, you earn their respect one-on-one by, by, you know, when they're talking about some deal they're doing or a company they're building, you, you actually contribute by adding value, by pointing out things or, or giving them criticism or, or giving them feedback on what's really great. Um, or identifying to them other things that are really cool. And they say, wow, this guy really, you know, I, I got a lot out of this conversation. So you do that with like 300 people and those people matter, right? Because they have themselves influence and trust. So for example, Josh Elman is a good example. This guy was, he was early on at LinkedIn, at Facebook, at Twitter, at Robinhood, early-ish on, meaning he was head of growth at a bunch of these companies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a big deal. He's been on our podcast.

Such a unique way of— it's almost like credibility hacking or something like that.

But that's the thing I think is important is like, I'm telling you how the mechanic works, but there's this— the thing you can't just— the reason it's not a hack is because your thoughts actually have to be interesting. You have to actually—

I don't mean hack like you're a hack. I just mean getting the process of getting to the desired outcome.

Right. The second thing is we both created content. So now his tweets are mostly making fun of people who create content and Threads and teach courses. But before that, he was doing it himself. He himself was saying, when you're building a social app, blah, blah, blah, or here's how we grew inside high schools for TBH. And why did I respect him? Because he released this, This memo actually got leaked from inside Facebook.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dude, this is, this is exciting to me. I think this is a fire episode. I'm not gonna, I don't wanna talk about it entirely right now because I think we should wrap here. But I, so last weekend you, when you were sick, so you probably didn't see this, I tweeted out about STRs, so short-term rental stuff. Did you happen to see that?

I saw it and I followed what you were talking about. It looks super interesting. Your Facebook group. I want to hear more about that. Uh, we can save it for another episode if you want.

We'll save it. But did you join the group?

I didn't join the group yet. No, I didn't know the name of it. It's called Sam's SDRs or something like that.

Yeah. I just made it in the car. Like my Sarah was driving and I just made it in the car.

Such a smart way to do things, by the way. Like it's going to sound super simple. Like, oh, I just made this thing because you were curious and wanted to learn about it. Right? Like you hadn't decided to do it.

Yeah. But it's, uh, well, I have now, but I'm still looking for property though. But I, um, Sam's STR crew. Yeah. I'll let you in. And there's like 1,000 or 1,500 people. It's mostly all tech guys, dude. I've met some guys.

Where'd you get these people? You, you tweeted it out?

Yeah, we'll start with that one next time. Does that interest you, dude? Of course it interests me. Yeah, that's great. It's crazy.

Who would have thought? About, about short-term rentals and how they're crushing it.

It hits the highest level of interesting me, which is where you say, what am I doing with my life? Why don't I do that? All right. You basically question your own life is the highest form of interest.

The thing is, the thing is, is that like you, you don't need to, quote, be doing it. You just need to have done it. And there is a world where you not quite set it and forget it, but like you just like— it's not like you need to do shit all the time to it.

Right.

And so I would say like one of the criticisms, not a criticism, but the one of my feedback for Sean and how Sean should like evolve maybe is to sometimes invest in some of these a little bit more boring, stable things, at least just a tiny portion of your, of your money. And like, this is like a really interesting asset class.

Have I told you about Steady? No. This is sweet. I think you'll like it. So I actually, I think the website is cool. Steady. I want to say it's steady.capital or steadycapital.com. One second.

Let me pull it up. If I just type in Steady.

Okay. Do steady.capital. S-T-E-A-D-Y.

How do most Uh, okay.

Tell me what, just tell me what you see.

It said it's a black screen and it says, how do most millionaires build their wealth? 90% of millionaires invest in real estate. Steady lets you earn passive income from real estate for $100. Okay. And then you invest in— okay. So Steady is a web dashboard for retail investors to buy shares of income-generating commercial real estate, commercial real estate, make investments and see your financial reports in our dashboard. And get monthly deposits from your investments directly to your bank account. We do not offer high adrenaline—

this is the part I wanted you to read.

So wonderful, wonderful.

So I own this.

So I read this. So this guy I used to play pickup basketball with, or he was on my like intramural basketball team, He, this guy Dylan, he created this company. I just kind of saw his Twitter and I was like, oh, what's that guy Dylan up to? Like, and I didn't even know he's a startup guy. Like he's just some dude we used to play ball with. And, um, I was like, Steady Capital, what's that? And I read this landing page and I was like, dude, what is this? I gotta invest. Literally. So I invested in both his company as well as I started putting my money into Steady.

This is why you invested in Steady.

Yeah. Cause I was like, dude, this, this, this is what I want. I was like, I want to own I want to have real estate, uh, income coming in, but I don't want to do the work of like going and finding a property, diligencing it, underwriting it, taking out a loan for myself, buying the property, managing the property, all that good stuff. So what these guys do is they basically handpick, um, sponsors. So they'll have like, um, guys who have a good track record in commercial real estate, commercial real estate. They'll be like, oh, this guy buys warehouses in the middle of Texas. And they basically diligence the properties for you. And then all you do— so what I do, I just set auto invest. So I just say $5,000 a month just as a starting point. I was like, I'm going to put $5,000 a month into commercial real estate. Cool. Over this year, I'll have $60,000 put into this. And then it just shows me, it's like, cool, you're going to be— you're going to break even in 18 months, but you're going to get your first check next month. And the, you know, basically what they do is they go to that sponsor, they say, hey, you know, you're gonna raise money for this deal anyways. Give us half a million bucks. We have this cadre of investors. We come in as one line item on your thing and we become an investor. And then you just like— we, our investors want passive income through real estate investing. And he's like, he's trying to do like the Robinhood model where it's like Robinhood made it where there's no fee, you could invest for a very small amount of money. So it's like normally real estate has pretty high barriers to entry for knowledge as well as the amount of money you have to put in. So his mission is like, I wanna make real estate as, you know, investible for even $100. And even $100, if you're earning 8%, great, you'll earn $8 of passive income.

And if you get— is this thing gonna be big, you think? It looks cool.

I think it's a really hard business to do cuz you know, you have to, it's like a two-sided market. You have to have really, you know, quality deals. But honestly, like these aren't like, like for example, with startup investing, I don't just give my money to anybody for startup investing cuz I'm like, dude, are your deals any good? Or are they all dog shit? With real estate, it's like, these are like the property— like, there's so much data about the property, it's collateralized by the property. The guy's got a track record. You're not looking for the next Uber, the 1000x return. You're looking for something that's going to generate 8 to 10% a year, 8 to 15% a year. And, um, cool, like, that's doable. That's not— that doesn't take a miracle. So I really like Steady. Uh, I think there's currently a waitlist or whatever. People have to like—

dude, I just signed up for it. It looks That's it.

Oh yeah, I'll email the guy to get you in. If people want to do it, they should, they should get it. I think this is real. I think this is really good for people. Uh, like I've had, I've had multiple people ask to invest in my startup fund and I just say no. I'm like, if you're not already wealthy, don't do this. Cuz this, don't use this as the way to get wealthy. You have much smarter paths to get there. If you already have, if you're already, you know, multimillionaire, cool. I, you should do this then to get some exposure to startups. But I think for most people, getting exposure to passive income real estate is a much better place to, to build wealth if you're not already wealthy through your business or what.

This is a, this is a good episode. Uh, I'm, I'm interested in city.

I have a whole bunch of other topics still, so I'll, I'll save those for Wednesday. I appreciate you holding down the fort while I was, uh, it was hard.

It was hard. I think like I had to do it with Ben and Ben's great. And, but I had, then I did it with Noah and Noah's great. But you and I are, I mean, you're talented, which I talk about all the time. You and I together are talented, and it was very hard with— it was way harder without— it was work.

I love to hear it. I love to be needed.

It was work, dude. It was work. And like, I thought there's been times where I'm like, oh fuck, I could just— I could handle this. It was work. It was like, I felt like I was working.

By the way, if people haven't listened to the episode you did with Ben on the Silk Road, it's on our feed. It's a special— I think it's called special episode Silk Road. I don't know what it's called. Go listen to that. I listened to that while I was sick. I fucking loved it. Loved it, uh, because I've been meaning to read American Kingpin for so long. You told me it was so good, and I'm just like, back to— I'm just not reading it. And, uh, so listening to that gave me my fix. And it, it's like, you know, the best kind of Netflix shows where after it's done, you then go down the rabbit hole and research more for like an hour on your phone in the middle of the night under the covers. Like, that's what I was doing about—

so, dude, dude, that one, I think we were prepared for 45 minutes. It wasn't a lot. But we were both so fascinated by that topic. And I think you— something happened where you weren't able to come and we found last minute and we're like, let's just do this, Ben. And so we're going to do another one on, uh, a guy called— I forget the— there's another version. There's another like juicy one, but, uh, I just bought the book. I'm going to go read it and like do it. That's— those episodes were fun. And Ben's really good at that stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And you guys play off each other really well. The one thing I really wanted to know 'Cause while you're here, I'll get you. How did they catch him? So you had said like basically they traced his— you said, okay, he had originally posted on this forum saying, ah, yes, hey, has anybody seen this thing? And then also that, that they, you know, caught him in the library right down the street from you.

So I got those bits, but I wanted to know how they know it was him.

Yeah, and yeah, like I think there was a bunch of details about like the investigation, like that, like cop chase, basically.

Uh, yeah, so basically, was there more there? It, you know, it's so funny. There's this episode of South Park where they're trying to like track this terrorist, and the boys are like, dude, just like do a reverse Google search and like, like just use Google. And that's what they did. And so the very first post ever about the Silk Road was written from a username, and that same username posted a few weeks prior to Stack Overflow saying, I'm building a website that is trying to do this. Yeah. Can you please email me rossulbright@gmail.com? And then they like did a— they like used a web archive because once they— once he wrote— once Ross caught his error, he changed his username from like Altoid to like Frosty or something like that. But it was on the web where like he was asking— he used a username to post about, I've created a website, or no, sorry, he created a username. It says, has anyone heard about this new thing called Silk Road? And that was the first time anyone ever mentioned it. But just weeks prior, that same username asked about like how to build an exchange or something like that. And then they found out who this Ross guy was and then they realized that, oh, we just like went to this guy's house recently as Homeland Security because he ordered like 18 IDs with his picture, but for like different states with different names. Let's keep an eye on him. And they found out basically it was like, all right, whenever. So they had a fake— they had an FBI guy become an employee of the Silk Road. And Ross, or Dread Pirate Roberts, the owner, would say, like, all right, I gotta log off to go blank. They noticed that Ross would walk out of his house and go for a walk, right? Like, they just tracked him. Or they're like, all right, I gotta go to Dominican Republic to do blank. And they're like, oh, Ross is in Dominican Republic on vacation according to his Facebook, right? And so they knew the, the FBI— the day he was arrested, he got arrested in the library right down the street from my house in Glen Park. And they said basically the FBI was, "Do not arrest him, we gotta get a SWAT team." And they're like, "Dawg, he's on his computer right now, we're chatting with him." And they like tackled him, right? He's logged in this second, we know, we're having a conversation with him. And so they had two FBI agents, he was sitting at a chair in the science of this library that I used to go to, he was sitting at a desk in a chair. And they go, they had two FBI agents dressed as kinda homeless people go right behind him and get into a fight where the guy was like, bitch, what are you doing here? And the lady was like, fuck you, man, you don't know. Like, you know, like they got like a domestic disturbance. And so he turns his back, and when he turns his back, the other FBI agents, one tackles him and the other one swipes his computer from his desk and runs it straight to the van. And they plug it— they already had the— they knew that he was using a PC. They had the outlet right there. They turned the video camera on and they start filming them. They go, look, here's the fucking— he's on the dashboard right now as we speak. Here's us, we were literally just talking to him. And then they plug a USB in and they like, they get a lot of the stuff out before the computer goes to sleep and is locked. And so that—

how is there no movie? Like, I know there's like a kind of shitty documentary. Why isn't there an amazing movie about this?

There needs to be. It's such a good story. The, the book American Kingpin is the best book I've read in years and years. It is such a fascinating story. And it's also, as we said in the podcast, it's an incredibly challenging story for someone like me because this guy Ross looks like me, right? Like when you hear about gangsters and shit, they're usually like poor, oftentimes minorities, and like, well, that's like the other, that person's not, you know, I don't, I don't relate to that person. Ross was, uh, from a good family, a white guy, a good looking dude who lived in San Francisco, played on computers, had these ideals of like, I want to help the world. And you're like, oh, he's just like me. Right. He's a fucking criminal who tried to like supposedly wanted to kill people and sold more drugs than Al Capone. And so it makes you question like what's right and what's wrong.

Yeah, dude, it's so good. Go listen to the episode if you, if you like that little bit. But it was really good. So that, that definitely got me through one of the, one of the COVID fever nights. I mean, I'm in, I got my fever going. I'm listening to The Silk Road. I got all kinds of crazy ideas in my head. It was awesome.

All right. That's the episode. Oh, we have to do one thing before we, before we go. So we 2 or 3 weeks per— 4 weeks ago at this point, we did a contest on TikTok where we were going to give $5,000 to at least one person who created videos about using our YouTube videos and chopped them up and posted them on whatever platform and used our clips. So the end result on TikTok alone, our hashtags in like the first 2 weeks got something like 30 million views. Do you know that? Damn. Um, and we're giving— Jonathan, confirm in the chat, are we giving it to, to the people that I think it's the cartoon? Let me know. But the first guy that we're— yeah. Okay. And it's the, uh, the first guy we're giving it to, his name on TikTok, I believe was MFM Minis. I think his name is Michael and he posted a bunch of videos. A few of them got more than a million views.

No, no, MFM Cuts, right?

Sorry. Oh yeah. I can't get that wrong. Cause there was an MFM Minis as well. Jonathan, Tell me exactly who the winner is in the chat. I can't get that wrong. M— MFM Cuts is the winner. And this person got something like— so MFM Cuts, that's the winner. MFM Cuts, that's the winner. This person got like 30,000 followers on their TikTok channel in like 10 or 15 days, millions of views. They won. And then the second place person who also gets $5,000, I think they're called, um, TunePods.

Is that what they're called?

Say it again.

Podtoon. Mr. Podtoon. So they turn podcasts into cartoons like South Park style. We've retweeted a couple of them because they're awesome and they are hilarious.

They are really good. So the best one was where I was making fun of you for not wearing a shirt. Hilarious. Really good. I have a feeling both of these guys are going to end up making a lot of money by turning this into a business, and I bet they already have.

Yeah, exactly. Um, good job. Good job by them.

By the way, MFM Cuts, the guy, he is in university still when I emailed him. He, he's 19.

I love it. Uh, good job by them. And, and so can, is this still going? Can people still like win next month? A different, like a different person could win or no?

Yeah, we're gonna keep doing it. We gotta wait. I gotta wait till Jonathan tells me we're allowed to announce it, but we are going to continue doing it because we saw, uh, in December our podcast, basically in November we were like just shy of a million. In December, we basically skipped over a million and went straight to 2 million. And I think that that TikTok thing was one of the reasons why it happened. One of a couple of reasons.

Yeah. And did we do this other winner too? This 60 Minute thing?

We'll announce that next time.

Okay. Sounds good. Uh, all right. I gotta go. Good stuff. Good seeing you again.

All right. I'll talk to you soon.

Good episode.