It's
useful for crypto users to use a VPN. And so that was one of my ideas about we sold before we got around to doing that, that would have been cool if you would have done that, that would have been and that's a pretty cool move.
Too bad. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
put my all into it, like all days. All
right, what's up? We got John Coogan here, John. Somebody who I only know through a lunch at a Mexican restaurant. La. And that's the best way to meet anybody. Who's gonna be a podcast guest? So as you got a crazy background, get people to run down if they don't know
who you are.
You've been entrepreneurial
life, never had a job started to companies that were both really interesting Soylent which was basically making a meal replacement. Drink is the easiest way to explain it tastes like the milk of Honey Nut Cheerios, which I always appreciated and then Lucy gum which is like a nicotine gum. Both of them went through YC together, they've raised over 130 million dollars, bunch of good lessons. There you're also an EI. Our Founders fund which is one of the more interesting places to kind of
Hang out or be a part of and like us you've made the mistake of leaving entrepreneurship to just be a YouTuber and this is great. So you know how to make content to which isn't which is amazing. You make really awesome videos. Sam was sending me one this morning. Sam you like his stuff, huh? I love it. Yeah, I like your stuff, John, I by the way. Sean, I'm an investor of Lucy so I got to get that out of the way and probably user it to and one point for sure. But I mean, I think you did invest like four years ago. So you know the fact that I haven't been on yet, I
Earn my stripes by post on YouTube, playing in the content world. You know, what is your guy don't even know it. Can you say what the valuation is? I think I invested twenty five thousand dollars at a 10 million dollar valuation 10. Yeah, you were probably in the seed round and now the company's worth like 60 70 ml. Right on paper. I've made a little bit of money. Yeah, not bad. We had I think we could tell the story. We had one of the other co-founders of Lucy come on the pot once and this guy we had met him at a some like event. I thought, maybe I'll hustle event some some
Nighttime event. And this guy was holding Court. I was Dave Dave. Yeah, he's telling stories there's five people around him. He's got ideas. Yeah, he's like oh there needs to be something called Pleasure Island and it's a place where you can just go sin. And I was like, wow. What is this guy? What is he talking about? And he's telling stories, he's amazing, everybody's just in captured by this guy. I'm like, we got to have this guy. The Pod, he comes on the Pod tells none of us stories and none of the idea is, if not, I don't want to test all those on the pond. We're like, dude, it's so I don't even think we have.
And the episode because he refused to tell the good stuff. So John will you make the same mistake as your pal? Absolutely, not, I mean II do think a lot of Founders have a touch of a ton of scar tissue built up from like the last 10 years of like the media, just going after Tech Founders and like, Tech Bros, bro, grammars, like it was really aggressive for a while. They're like anything. You said would be like, taken out of context, putting some clickbait but now that you'll on bot Twitter and kind of just like caused enough chaos, like you can just say whatever you want and there's like no I I've been telling
Every founder, I know like, cancel cultures over. Like, don't worry about things. Just say, whatever you believe we're gonna do some of your philosophy. Some of the this place is like cancer cultures over. But first, let's run through the background here because both of these startups normally we try not to spend too much time on the guess with the background but yours both are so interesting. Can you just tell us you know, give us the origin story for Soylent because when this came out it was a very different idea than anything. I was saying anybody doing Silicon Valley, nobody would at that time. This was maybe 2012, I had
Just moved to San Francisco and you had kind of like, uber and Airbnb. But very few people were in the San Francisco Venture Community. We're doing like like a like a drink or like a product that you could eat. You could drink, that wasn't software-based and but still was Innovative and so it was like kind of in this mix and I remember, Andreessen Horowitz got behind it and some others. And so it was very interesting thing and I think it started out of like a hacker house, right? Like you guys had a crazy house is that right?
Right. Yeah, I mean bunch of funny stories from that. This was the, yeah, Warby Parker was like, the first e-commerce company. To kind of, think about it from like a tech first angle. We were couple years after them right around the same era as like, Dollar Shave Club, if you remember that company. But yeah, we met in a hacker house. My, my co-founder and I, we went to preschool middle school, high school together, went to college in the same city. And so we move out to Silicon Valley. We're looking for a place. We find.
Thing on like Craigslist, it's like an Airbnb listing and they're like this place is incredible. It's got a pool. It's got five bedrooms. It's exactly like the social network. You're going to love it. We show up the pool is filled with algae, the bathroom's don't work, it's just absolute squalor. So we grind for like, six months there eventually, we moved to the tenderloin which is an even nicer community and and we're living in technically a one-bedroom with three guys.
So, I was living in the living room and another guy robbed. The guy who actually came up with the idea for soil, and he was living, what was technically a closet, because didn't have a window. And we were just, we were just hacking. We were just not a lot of dating going on. Not a lot of dating. Not a lot of anything. Just wake up program, go to sleep, wake up program, go to sleep, and we just had a wall with sticky notes on the wall. Being like, okay. After this idea fails, we'll build this next idea. All all the worst ideas you've ever heard on here, when people come on and give you
Bad ideas. Like like we were building them all and they were all failing. Give us a couple. What were they like take a picture and it puts it through a filter and it puts it on a shirt and like males, you the shirt, like it just like weird stuff like that. There were some ideas that were good. They were just like way before their time. Like, do you know, Google stadia. It allows you to play video games in the cloud streams it to you. Like, we basically built that, but it was just like five years, too early. And also, we didn't have a trillion dollars of data centers for free, like Google does.
It like and even stadia, I think failed. So like even Google couldn't pull it off and if so of course we weren't gonna be able to get it done. They're just a lot of those ideas where was like too early wrong team bad execution, or just terrible go-to-market. Like there were some things that we built, they were pretty good, but it just didn't work and and living with Rob living with Rob would be odd because I know Rob. He's a, he's so unique and eccentric and weird and in such an interesting way. Yeah. So he'd been writing on his blog and posting on Hacker News and he wrote a bunch of
Lee viral clickbait, targeted it at programmers. So speaking of dating, he wrote a blog post saying how he hacked tender and and he was saying this was before like Bots and stuff, so he basically claimed he didn't really do this, it was more just like for satire and for fun but he said he wrote a script that would automatically swipe right on everything and then and then generative a I talk to this was like 10 years ago to, but like talk to them, talk to the person and then it would use the Uber API to call them a car.
And then he would order doordash and deliver the food. And so, like the punch line, at the end of the, at the end of the story, was basically, like he wasn't involved at all because it was like, yeah, you can. You can imagine where that gets, but basically he'd built a little bit of a following on Hacker News. And so when the question was like, we like building these software companies, we like coding and building stuff launching businesses, but we are going to run out of money and we're going to have to get jobs. So we need to look at our expenses and understand. Where are we burning money. We paid our rent a year.
Vans, I think we were paying $1500 for three dudes, to live in the heart of San Francisco like crazy low money. We owned our laptops paid. Our internet bill. Like there was really no cost other than food and so figuring out how to get food is cheap as possible was like a very logical, you know, conclusion from that. So, Rob starts whipping up the powders figures out this meal replacement. He's like, instead of buying a cheeseburger over here or some groceries over there, let me buy 200 pound sack of protein powder.
Do you remember that first conversation? When he's like, guys, I got it will just get a bunch of powders and then that'll be the food. Like, is that? Yeah, that literally how her to there were. Yeah, there were two phases. The first phase was, he told me like, oh, I'm doing this diet experiment. I think it's going to make me healthier. I'm gonna, you know, monitor all my macros and micros, and start working out and get in shape. And I was just like, who cares? What we look like? Like all the only thing that matters is like our code and like our business ideas, like we don't, we don't, which is very stupid because obviously, you do need to be healthy to like
Be productive. So that was a stupid take by me, but I kind of wrote it off and then he kept doing it for a few weeks. And then we were at like a dinner with a friend. She'd made like homemade sushi. And I mean, that's like a treat when you're broke, and he was like, nah, I'm not going to eat. I'm on this soil, everything. And I was like, this is crazy. It's so, I mean, it's sort of like that Brian Johnson before Brian Johnson, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the stress test. So basically, he told me that I was like, do you have a name for this? And he was like, I'm calling it Soylent and I knew the reference and
Like this genius, we need to sell this today. Like this is like this is going to be the market, entry strategy is going to be so viral, but yeah, I mean, he basically did a stress test, he lived on it for 30 days and then people would just be like, yeah, I think this ingredients stupid, I think this is bad, but like, hey if you survived 30 days only on this, like I can probably take a sip and see how it tastes. And so it created this chaos. When we launched my content company, the hustle, one of the first early viral video viral. You articles was I paid a guy to G's to live on it for
He days while he was running 70 miles a week as like a amateur Runner. Yeah. May he rest in peace? Yeah. He dropped dead on day 15 and now and that's what made this story. Go viral. The, the the silent thing that was the gift that kept on giving particular. I mean, for me as well, you know, like I got traffic from a to. Yeah. And it was, it was like a left-right issue, everybody hated it, and then you post it. And then this was back in the day, when like the Facebook algorithm was like,
Entirely comment driven. So people would correct us and they'd be like, oh, you made a mistake you named you accidentally named your company after a movie with Charlton, Heston in it. That's a sci-fi movie and it's like know, obviously we did that on purpose like what are you talking about? But that the fact that there would be that comment and then another cat person would come in and be like, oh well there's actually this book and somebody that I know you need to fire your marketing. People be like I actually got the reference and then they be talking every single time we posted anything. In addition to all the comments about is this good? Is this bad? What does it mean for society?
Just massive viral fuel any any article went viral and so we were able to kind of trade up the chain and go from Vice news to, you know, the hustle to BBC to the New York Times New Yorker and then, eventually Rob was on The Colbert Report with sitting next to Stephen. Colbert's crazy. Well, it's definitely shows the power of a viral product but also, it was my first time learning about signal. So like I had never bought a fancy watch or car or jacket or anything but
The first time I was seeing you holding a Soylent. It was like this crazy signal was going out to the Rose, I'm in Tech. First of all, you know that just by this drink, you don't have to ask anything else. All right. Maybe we'll look this brown guy in San Francisco. Probably would have guessed that one. Okay, what, what else does it tell you it tells you like about your productivity where you have brown guy, it's Soma, you know, like backpacks, like sagging to the back of my knees with somebody that's so, so that is like, his grandpa choose like you value productivity over. Yep. Things like taste.
Things like Health, right? Like oh yeah everything. Yeah. So it's a value signal. Then. It was like a contrarian signal. It was like, I don't give a fuck what you think about me signal. It was so powerful as a signaling tool for, like, this one year period. Yeah, but that actually Cuts both ways because food is such a signal and there's so much vag value. It's very hard to accrue like Monopoly power, and how do you actually go about disrupting Nestle? If it be, if every, if every food is like an extension of personal expression, it gets very hard because as soon as everyone is doing one thing I'm
Gonna want to do something different. And so there's this constant like, ping-pong in these products. So it's very, very hard to create like one brand to rule them. All you said something about Peter, teal, talk to me and for what? And one hour, he diagnosed everything that could go wrong in my business. Was that about Soylent. Yeah. What, what did Peter tell you? Yeah. I mean, we went in for like the pitch and sat down and did like kind of a working session and I mean now everyone knows the framework because he's written the book 021. It's like incredible.
Popular. Everyone kind of knows that, you know, the way venture-backed companies accrue value is through, moats, the development of moats and you know, the Hamilton Homer has the powers framework. Peter has, you know, different different thesis around this and and we know the basics. It's like, you know, brand intellectual property, complex, coordination scale, economies Network economies right Network effects, and so, but at this time in 2013, everyone thought that there would just be a match
School network effect, that would show up, and that's just not true. So, there was this weird dynamic where, you know, a lot of investors that we talked to were like, oh yeah, like you don't need to advertise, you can just like you, like the people liked it so much that they'll sell it to each other and that's true in a multi-level marketing scheme. But it's not true if you don't build that infrastructure to make that happen. So we never, we never received achieve, like, escape velocity there. And he was just kind of like, yeah, like this is just a widgets business like, run this like a
You know, any other business like you need to sell like you have product Market fit which we did like you just need to maximize, you know, you're like run the Playbook of you know Market bring the customer in. Make sure you're bringing them in cheaper. He was basically like this is a great lifestyle business guys. Congrats. And and then we raised a bunch of venture and it was a disaster. What was your Peak? What was your Peak Revenue? Like almost 100 ml, almost 100 Mil and I was reading you guys sold at recently and
not a good outcome. All right. I was, I was gonna say no disrespect but the outcomes sucked like for how compared to the hype and your Peak Revenue. I think it was like, yeah, it was sold by publicly traded company that I read, it was sold for 60 million dollars. Something, I mean, not not a lot. I actually like, don't even know the exact Dynamics because there's a bunch of other like, assets that were, like, rolled up. And it's part of this combined thing. But it was sold for like, maybe as much or less than you raise your raise, a hundred million dollars. Yeah, exactly. Which basically means like the
Doesn't get anything. Got it would. So you didn't get what you didn't. Get that wealthy from it. Yeah, we got a decent amount but not like, what we should have, you know, if we'd maximize gotta do that company, but then you started Lucy. So, Lucy is cool. Are you there full time right now? No, I'm like one day a week at Lucy, mostly helping out with stuff like this, doing content. And then ideally like, brokering deals with other content creators, like we want to
Do more. We being Founders fund? No, no me being the weaving, the Lucy, T.O to give some background, you know, Soylent, is this nutrition product? We run that for 45 years and then Lucy is a nicotine gum brand and nicotine pouch brand. So if your viewer if your viewers are familiar with Zen, you know where a direct competitors in but we differentiate on Flavor strength and a couple other did. I'm a I'm a all day, everyday Tapas in guy. Yeah, I imagine most.
People in the audience are it's extremely. I just wish that Lucy sold it at 7-Eleven because going to the gas stations, like part of my routine. You know, I gotta go. See my boys there that I got out. I mean, 100%. That is that is the name of the game, and that was what we'll actually unlock like massive value in the Lucy business. 100 people should know that. By the way, when you, when you email Sam you're like, hey, I know you're super busy guy and something to keep this brief. Sam's busy at 7-Eleven shoot the shit with his boys and the curb.
Those lot of tickets. So scratch themselves. My friend, he's busy, but just in a different way than you expect. Yeah. I gotta drop off like a palette of Lucy at that exact 7-Elevens be like here, it's free. Now Sam can get his well, you the, the Lucy things are cool because basically, as in is just a pouch, but Lucy has, it's called a breaker and so you like, bite into this and you get like a little Menthol or something like a flavor. I love it. I like to sit. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a liquid flavoring. So yeah, I mean a lot of people
I mean that the pouches although they're they're much better than the pouch of the previous heaters, they dry your mouth out and that's the number one complaint. So we figured it out you know, how do we address that? Well, let's just actually take liquid flavoring and put it inside a capsule then and then when you break it, it moistens the pouch and then doesn't dry your mouth out. Gotcha. All right, let's talk about ideas. So, those two ideas, you did, I would say, are in the, like top 1% of weirdo ideas, which means I love it, and I love you. Yeah. What are your other weirdo ideas that you're not doing?
You sent us a couple of bullet points but explain them. So, let's run through some of your ideas. Yeah, I mean, I think the first one would be interesting to talk about just because, you know, you guys are obviously creators as well. Is just this idea of a Creator owned VPN. So, we've seen that vpns, might be the number one Advertiser on YouTube. I don't have the exact stats, but anyone who's listened to a podcast? Or you watch the Youtube video, can probably name five different vpns and yet none of them are venture-backed. There's not like one
Or they're not like majorly Venture back. They're not big Venture winners. There's not like one that's running away. We have you researched these guys. Yeah, yeah a little bit. They're like all in Panama or Maldo the the mall. What's called Moldova? Like Maldives. I'm tried looking them up on LinkedIn because I didn't, I did a ton of research on about this. I specifically I did a lot of research on the VPN review website. So there is one called compare Tech that was doing 14 million in Revenue, 13 million in profit. Like, I saw their financials and
They sold yeah, to of EPN company. And I was like, these are you can companies are crazy, but I looked all up, I looked up the employees on LinkedIn and like, you can't find their employees on LinkedIn even though their companies that are doing 300-400 million dollars a year in Revenue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a very, very odd space and basically, like there's no, there's no big like Venture winner, there's no, like, oh Airbnb, we all know the CEO. He's taking the company public, you know, there's no, like, there's no, like front facing company. That's like, oh, this one,
Winning and going to run away with it. It's more like there's a bunch of them. They all print cash and there's not really going to be one winner because there's no network effect. Again, it's it doesn't have a big moat. The moat is marketing and that's why they all spend on marketing. That's how they differentiate is. Just you check all the boxes. How big are they easily easily in the billions for the aggregate industry? And like you said, yeah, they're certain that are doing their certain vpns that are doing hundreds of millions of dollars of sales. And so, the name of the game is just check all
All the boxes so that no no VPN reviewer who's independent can like take you down and be like there's a fatal flaw and do not use this VPN because I know for a fact that it doesn't do the right thing. But once you've actually implemented all the features where yes we did we check all these boxes, then it's just a marketing game and that's why you see them at. Is it just a commodity like with the I don't know much about the VPN Tech. Like, is it, I is it terribly complicated. It is complicated programming wise like it's somewhat complicated to write the
Code, I guess, but it's not complicated from like understanding the features that the customer wants, you're not trying to create some sort of and you called it Beast. VPN. So, what's your business idea here? Yeah, I called it Vis Vivia, and I call it Beast VPN because obviously, mr. Beast is the biggest Creator and he is an interesting place where he has an international audience, he has a audience, that's it, just it's just everyone. His audience is everyone. And
So what's a product that you can sell all everywhere across the world? That's very high margin, low churn VPN and that's why vpns are advertising all over YouTube is because it doesn't matter if the ad is served to someone in Japan or India or Europe, like the vpns available there, so I'll give this idea a 9 out of 10. Nice. What I like about this idea is exactly what you said, it takes the weakness of Creator businesses which is you get a bunch of low value, kind of
Subscribers might be like, you know, some the value of a random subscriber and India are very random subscriber in Croatia. It's like hard to get ad money for that type of viewer, but this product is actually even better for international people than it is for in the u.s. So I think that's one big strength and then obviously recurring Revenue digital good. Arbitrary Revenue software is obviously amazing. I only give it a 9 instead of a 10 just because it's the first idea and I'm not that easy. So I gotta I gotta talk at one point just on that.
Alone. Also, to be fair, it might make more sense for like a Linus Tech tips and an MKBHD to do this because they're more of like tech people. We were going to do this at milk Road. Actually, when we built the road we're like ok, cool, we're making money. We were profitable on just newsletter ads, but I was like, what's the best product we could do? I was like, what if we did a crypto, a VPN for the crypto economy because we're at that time where, you know, one of the more trusted Brands we're like it's kind of a commodity software, it's useful for crypto.
Users to use a VPN and so that was one of my ideas about we sold before we got around to doing that. That that's a good idea. That's a good idea. You should have that would have been cool if you would have done that, that would have been and that's a pretty cool move.
Too bad. Well, they still think I still own milk route. So I we always taught on a part of it. I'm gonna tell them after this and be like, hey guys, let's revise. I mean the main thing is that you just have to have the the distribution you've listed Linus Tech tips on your, you said, you know this guy? But no I just saw him. So you said that, what's the guy's name Marquis? What's that guy's? What's his channel MKBHD? Yes, Brown Mark. Yeah, I like him. Everyone knows him. He's cool. This guy Linus Tech tips has 15
Million subscribers. Yeah, oh my God. What and like, yeah, I mean, he, he has a team that's like, you know, I think over 100 people. Wow, multiple channels podcast everything. He actually built his own like media platform, where you can like go in and watch videos and and talk to each other. It's like a forum site. Its he just released like a screwdriver and sold, like the only dollars of a screwdriver or something like that. Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure you did great on that. The question is like, would he have
I've done better if instead of buying a screwdriver which needed to be bought probably locally or it was really expensive to ship internationally. He sold something that was recurring software. That was 99 percent margin, a VPN. The only thing is that like honestly the screwdrivers cooler than a VPN. So, you know, I can't fault him because the screwdriver is like, you get to build your hacker, you get to put your PC together. Like, that's fun, VPN. It's, it's a little boring. I use a VPN like vpns. All right, what you got second idea?
So one of our most popular episodes on the Pod was, when I was talking about the fire movement, it stands for financially independent retired, early. And I'm not necessarily part of that because I don't want to retire, but I do love the idea of just being financially independent. I think it just gives you so many different options and I love content on that topic because I just love hearing stories and tactics and things like that. And the best podcast on that topic is called choose Phi have been around for years like
Or seven years at this point tens of thousands of reviews. And if you're into earning more saving, more and being financially independent, that's something that I'm a big fan of. It's something that was my goal. Starting at the age of 20, then you have to check them out. The host is name is Brad. He's amazing. He's a big MFM listener. So he understands what we're about and it's choose Phi at chosse, and then fi like, financially independent. So, F, I choose Phi, you can find it on Apple podcast Spotify wherever you get your podcast, we're big fans of them.
Check it out. Yeah, so obviously Americans love guns. You're an American, you own some guns that's not changing. We've seen through, you know, the past few decades that like, like, real, like restrictions on guns are not coming and so the business is probably pretty durable. We've seen that, the, the stocks of ammunition companies are doing fine over the last decades, but the price is increasing. A lot of, that's just due to supply chains, but there might be some more structural issues. Also, just more people are hunting.
Ting more people are buying guns and buying ammunition and obviously shooting is just a fun hobby. So, the, the over the last three years, the price of shotgun shells. Went from $10 to $16, pretty big increase and there's this massive shortage. So the idea here is basically like maybe you need a new, maybe we need to bring some some efficiency to the ammunition supply chain. And I think it's an interesting idea, I don't actually know enough
Out how to run an Ammunition Depot, or ammunition Factory. But what I do know is that the hottest Trend right now in business is like, Roll-Ups or search funds. And every guy who graduates from HBS is like, I'm going to go roll up laundromats or I'm gonna go roll up, dentist, dentist. It's like everyone has an idea for these things, and they're all very commodity. They're not very contrarian, and so there's probably not a lot of alpha there, but it's like the guy, the people that are coming out of HBS are probably not saying,
I'm going to go roll up weapons manufacturers and obviously like and roll is crushing it in the Venture side but they're doing like insane software Hardware, building drones building like these really Advanced a high-powered weapon systems. This is not that you do this company, you buy a bunch of, you know, all we do is make shotgun shells. You buy three of them, you move the employees around, you kind of optimize things a little bit. It's just like a very boring like, you know, private Equity style roll
And then maybe at a cruise power over time because obviously it is a massive industry, but you're not coming in and trying to reinvent the wheel. You're not being like we're going to actually three print the shell or something. No it's just like good operation is not a gun YouTubers. You know. We could we could mix that. Yeah we could get Batman. Do you live in California? I do. I do. Are you guys even? So I used to live in California. I live in Texas. Now, I own guns because I have a ranch, and it's fun shooting. Are you guys even allowed to own guns in California? Yes, we're allowed to own guns.
What know, like, what's the rule? No. No. I mean, you can, there's a whole bunch of restrictions on like rifles, like certain capacity magazines, but I think most recently, like it's pretty easy to get a concealed carry permit in San Francisco. It's kind of a narrative violation. Wait what I thought for years, that was impossible. Yeah, most people think it's like Unthinkable, but in fact, it is becoming easier which is kind of crazy. But, yeah, I mean, obviously, California is not like a dream state for for, you know, if your gun fan but
Shan Shan, you been talking about getting your conceal and carry for years now, right?
I don't know gun, scare me, but I did. Look at investing in an ammunition, roll up. I'm trying to find the, the damage you did. That's hilarious. Yeah, we got introduced to somebody who was doing it and I was like, I love this idea, but it was so far field out of, like, what I'm used to investing in that I was, and I didn't know.
How do you know, how do you know that they can actually do the
Diligence like if you can't do the detail. Exactly. I don't think I would touch this. I wouldn't touch this either. Why I wouldn't want this in my obituary that I, you know, even though and I and I and I understand how that's hypocritical. You know, I criticize Sean because Sean wants to like invest in only fan companies and I'm like, I'm not touching that, but at the same time, I could soon porn. So like there's definitely like sure a little bit of I acknowledge the hypocrisy cognitive. Yeah, but like, you know, I guess I guess, you know, it doesn't have to be black and white and Shades of Gray and
And like, maybe I prefer to stay on the wider of the that side. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's totally fair and I think that's why there might be Alpha in this area because I
think that dummies like, you Sam. That's what that's where I why this opportunity exists because that made no sense. It may touch the sense, dude, what are you talking about? Like, I love guns, I enjoy them. I buy them, I'm buying and buying the ammunition, but, you know, I don't want to support. I don't want to invest in it because only bad people would buy it. Like, what does that
mean? Oh no. I didn't say only bad people. Is that I do.
Own it. I didn't say I say that. I buy the stuff I use it. I think it's a very enjoyable. I love shooting for fun, but that doesn't mean I want to make it my career. I mean Sam would would your opinion change if we were actively at in a hot War, like my mom. You're like it's your duty to America, to optimize the ammunition supply chain because there are like there are troops from, you know, some country Landing in the beaches of California. What my opinion change? Yeah, of course. And that's totally fair. I didn't
my opinion could change about the whole thing. I'm very open to new data points of changing my opinion. I'm just saying like yeah, like Andhra like I love and roll. I like I think that's a very patriotic Mission but I know 100% owning Remington like right now. I'm like, I don't know, man. Like yeah. I could probably make money in other ways and my conscience would be a little less like it would be. It's very, it's just an easier
decision. Sam, I got a question for you. There's a thing going viral on Tick Tock right now.
That's my girlfriend's asking their boyfriends or, you know, wives and husbands something. I'll be the wife here, I'm gonna ask you a question that they're asking, Hey, when's the last time or how about know how often do you think about the Roman Empire? Anything to do with the Roman Empire?
All the time a lot?
Like why under what circumstances we need to think
about that.
Just like like Gladiators and shit just like battling to the death in front of everyone.
When's the last time you thought about something like that like this week last night? I mean the funny thing
here is that like the the meme immediately before that was like the in the arena Meme and everyone intact was posting literal like Roman Empire gifts that because that's everyone in Tech is like obsessed with the arena. And I know that there are two separate communities, like, that's not why the mean popped up but it's like, yeah, it's so
To see all these women are like, they're like they, as they see, somebody asked the question, the guy answer something. Exact almost Verbatim. What Sam just said,
always always, like, I'm thinking about it right
now all the time. Yeah. Like, what do you mean? Of course. Now
that my wife has a video of that where uh, II didn't know that the moment she takes out her phone videos means like she has to think about that Roman Empire. Yeah. And I was like, I'm thinking about it right now,
why I do not know and then all the comments are like you know, that make them. That's crazy. And then they come back for fly. Like I just asked he said last week, he said he thinks about a toy store.
We can lightly. Yeah, and don't find your blood. Like I can't fathom why this man who doesn't take out the trash on time, who forgot to pick up our daughter from preschool. Why? He is thinking about the Roman Empire twice a week, dude. I think about 9/11 and WWII
like 90% of my day. Like do you guys not think like what would I do if I was on that plane to be? Like
I think about
that constantly like it's just a very normal. Masculine are like there's this
Shane galaxies like just so you know being obsessed with history particular WWII is a precursor to becoming a republican like it's not gonna happen today but like you know, it's early onset. Wait, Shawn you don't think about like WWII like on a regular basis?
No but I have my own version of it which is like, I'm constantly like I if I walk into a place
I'm like assessing how if I had to? How would I like Rob this place? Or like if some shit went down like what's the move? All right, what's the move? Okay, there's some sort of like
masculine daydreaming. That happens like my buddy, David like he he imagines like ninjas coming through every door and window and how he would like take them out tactically. Like that's his every time I'm in
a baggage claim. I'm like, I could take any of these bags right now and just walk out. There is no security in this place.
Are you kidding me? Like the bag? Explain. I will never get over that. Why it's so easy to just take anyone's bag.
My wife and I go out to dinner. We have like a rule Sam's back, does not sit to the front door. I have to see the front door like you don't like but I can't have people coming in without me. Knowing, I've got a secret door. I do think it's a man thing. I you know, John we there's this funny quote, Scott Galloway said he goes, huh, you should exercise so you can kill and eat most everyone in a room or be able to outrun them.
And that's like at its root. That's kind of like what we're talking about right now. Yeah, 100%,
what ask you you? So Sam is basically like clearly just, like, surging on testosterone you re I are at Founders fund, which is I remember at one point when they were talking about PayPal. They said, oh, you know, Max love to interview some engineer back in the early days of PayPal. And then he was like, no, no, can't hire this guy. The what he passed everyone else's test. He's like, he plays basketball, I don't know. Any great program who goes.
Plays basketball three times a week. That's not a thing. And so they were like very anti jock. Do you get to hang out with the founders fund people? A lot, like do you hang out in person at all? And what's that like? Because seems like a room full of very interesting, very different people.
Yeah, it is, it's, It's oddly. They've done a great job of not creating a monoculture in a very small organization. So, yeah, there are definitely like complete jocks that, I mean, obviously, we know Keith for boys that Barry's like five times today. Yeah, I don't know if I
I would call Chi through boy a jock. But like, why do you want workout not? He's a fitness
nut for sure. But berries,
yeah, he's not trying to be the best at sports, you know, he's trying to be the best at exercising. Why is that giant white knob just joking? But why is that, guys? Why is keep four boys? Such a dickhead on Twitter? Like why does he behave that way? He's like a needlessly. Rude. I think a lot of it is just like holding the line on like like when he sees something that's like not true.
He doesn't want it to spread and so he just like, shuts it down like really aggressive. Yeah. He's like put it, he's like, he's put his flag and some silly things like Miami. So it's like, if Miami doesn't work it hits like gonna hurt him and it's like, you know, doesn't have to, you know, you could love it and also it's not the best. A lot of these things are, you know, I think learned behaviors. I think everyone in tack is somewhat like, like just injured from the past, like, for sure, it's very obvious.
Getting like just beat down for every little thing. And so a lot of people have put up walls and I think that it's Ty. I agree with you. I think it's time to kind of take down the Walls, be a little bit less defensive generally, but I understand where all these behaviors are coming from what Sean Parker up to. We haven't heard about that guy in years, we got to get him back on Twitter because if you or acts because if you talk to anyone who knows him they will just say that he was the greatest poster of
all time. There's
Best on Twitter now,
I mean, probably like, Rahul leg 'mad annual Johnson like those kinda guys, right? Like, do you guys remember that publicity? Stunt basically, they did they fooled CNBC into reporting. Their employees are fired. It was very like that. That's just like, you know
those guys. They're like doing a normal startup. They're like building so we did.
Yeah. Yeah. No, they're not like comedian. They should have just
gone all-in on like oh shit. We need
To just create like this sort of like some version of Punk'd or like, you know, something for the tech industry they should have just gone all in its person. I was, I would have dropped the started like six-month sabbatical on the startup. I'm just going to see what happens if I fully Troll and like, maybe I could be the thing that the community
needs, dude. Rahul linguist still makes me like, spit water up my nose when I hear that. It's so funny. It's so funny. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, how would you monetize that if they would, you just be doing stand-up? So
I think you'll like it.
Silent donations from billionaires. I've seen that guy. He only hangs out with successful billionaires and I've seen him in person, like, because everybody who was big in Tech loved that troll, Ilan. Loved it. You know, like, they're all in guys like, oh my God, it's the best, it's the best. I feel like they could have a patreon of billionaires. Only that just fun them to, like, do statement art, you know, like comedic statement are against the media against the local politicians against whatever. That's what I would have done if I was them. That's it baby. That's
about it.
I do but I don't know. I like it seems like they're pretty legit at what they're doing. They're like actually good programmers. You have a thing on this document that I want to fight you about. Yeah yeah. I knew this I was getting your good. The here's the. So John sent us this document. He says unique philosophies lifestyle businesses are worthless. What do you make your case
for a walk? The plank
Slowly just like let's have a fun debate because I'm like, you know, working at a venture capital firm and I can kind of represent the VC crew and you guys are like the kings of like the lifestyle business. We aren't the kings of that. By the way,
I want to be the king of it. Actually, I actually will accept that
compliment. I don't mind being the king. But what I'm saying is I think that we are one of the very few kind of content creators. You pay Pop proper respect to it. Yeah, I think what I'm saying is we do both, we think both are cool. That's there's very few people.
People. I think that are in the middle and I think we are in the middle. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And so yeah, basically, the, I think the point is just that lifestyle, businesses are great Define that. So I would say, I would say, like non venture-backed, non blitzscaling, non hyper scaling non Monopoly, something without a crazy moat where it's just like you go and work at it and maybe it gets really big and maybe you wind up being a billionaire but you didn't, you didn't like do this growth at all costs. Insane
And what's hyper-growth, two or three times a year, I mean sometimes 10 times a year, right? It depends on the scale at the early stages. It goes really, really fast. But I'm specifically thinking of like Facebook, right. I'm specifically thinking of the power law outcomes in Venture and my point is that basically only about one percent of companies that get started raise Venture Capital but about 99 percent of the market cap. In the public markets, they took Venture and so venture
Has this very like athlete, like disproportional outcome and I believe that that the bigger the company, the bigger, the impact on the world. And so if you want to have a really, really big impact, you should actually be trying to raise money grow very, very grow very quickly, like you're not going to build a hundred billion dollar company compounding at 2%, a year, five percent a year, over your lifetime, it just won't happen, alright? Let me play the other side of that please. Your analogy of well. Okay. So you're saying
One percent or 99 percent of the value is created by the one percent of companies that raise money that to me, is also saying that like look 100% of the soldiers on D-Day, who ended up killing like the Nazis that ended that battle they had to land on that beach anyway. Right. So you might as well lay down that beach and I'm like, yeah, but the other one's got like fucking kill the destroyed. How about I just like not worried about killing Nazis and like I can just like
This little thing on the side you're gonna be like it's like it's like dude like this whole thing with like VC it's like your funding all the you as investor are funding all these companies and you're like dude I don't give a fuck which one of yous dies out here because I know one of you is gonna like make me my money. And so from my perspective, I'm like yeah, so if I can get rich at with a higher likelihood, which is maybe in most cases, the number one reason for starting a business and not most cases like other cases. It's like the number 3 version. Let's say your number one version is like I want to like
Great change. Getting rich is still up there so like if like if you can get rich and create value and have fun and work for yourself and have a higher likelihood of doing that, why wouldn't you go that route? So so the reason I think you shouldn't go with that route is because I think your overall impact on humanity and society and the world will be lower if it if it survives. Yeah, this whole question of, would you rather Own 100% of 100 million dollar company or 1% of a ten billion dollar company? I don't even think it's a question, obviously.
Obviously the 10 billion dollar company because the 10 billion dollar company is having a much larger impact on the world that quite that's that's that an obvious answer. But no. No, it's not, it's not for for a lot of people. They say, I would rather have 100% and be able to go on vacation and, you know, chill and just have these cash flows come directly to me and not have to deal with like, you know, all this other stuff and I get that. But my point is that, like, I believe that humans have a duty to each other to go and have the largest impact possible.
That is often done with the backing of venture capitalists. I don't think you believe that. Yeah, I do. Would you
not be like curing cancer? Is that a selling nicotine gum? Likely to be honest?
Yes. Oh, I mean that's hilarious that you use that as an example because that's like the actually, the best way to stop lung cancer is to get people to switch,
right? Yeah. But don't let facts
get in the way of a good argument. But I will actually synthesize this for you and I think we will agree on this point which is that what you should actually do with your life.
Life is pick the hardest. Most interesting, most value creative problem that you are equipped to solve. So, can I create a cancer? Curing drug? No, I don't have that background. It's not an option for me. So I would fail if I went into that industry, but I should pick the most ambitious thing and the best idea that I have. And then I should be very rigorous about whether or not that idea is appropriate for venture capital. And I think that if Mark Zuckerberg
Raise Venture Capital, his company would be dead and I think there's a lot of companies. I've been a part of some of them where we raised cut, we've raised vc4 come for a company that didn't need VC. And it also killed the company. I think. So, basically, you have to, you have to pick the best idea that you're equipped to solve and then decide the financing strategy that aligns with that and there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Do you wish you would have done a different idea instead of soylent, or do you wish that you just hadn't taken VC and you got
Earthy. Oh I don't know. That's interesting. I mean right before someone I was working on natural language generation in 2013 which is like the hottest Trend now and so if I'd probably just like stuck with that for a decade I'd probably be doing something cool right now. Maybe I think that you would have been more impactful if Soylent has it had raised and you had gotten rich and then you would have been able to like say like something else. Well, you wouldn't, like, I don't care about money as much, so I'll just do this other crazy thing.
Is a moonshot. Like, I think it's because I took a similar argument as you, yeah. And then someone corrected me and they're like, yeah, but it's a lot easier to go after moonshot ideas, when you don't worry about a mortgage. And as someone who had a bootstrap exit, I agree. I'm like,
It's pretty like I understand why Founders want to take secondary because you are more dangerous when you have 10 or 20 or 30 million dollars, like you are more dangerous. When you don't worry where you're like, I'm rich enough that. I don't have to worry but I'm not rich enough that I want to stop. Yeah, I'd get 100% feel like I'm in that category like that. That put you in a dangerous category, I think. Yeah. I 100% feel like I'm in that category and and thus, because that's true. I think lifestyle businesses are awesome. Oh, because I can get you there faster.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I'd. Yeah, yeah. Get like the base hit before you do the big thing. Yeah, not unreasonable. And I think that's also kind of a synthesis of what we're saying. We kind of agree, but that, it's like, Moon shots are good, but the path might be circuitous to them. Right. And there are freaks out there like a teal on, like a duck. Well, I don't know about Zack but like an eel on who's willing to risk it all. Yeah, even Elan like PayPal could be framed as like less, ambitious than SpaceX and Tesla, right? It's like the mission might not be as big. Who
knows? Well, he
Did this out the other day and so Andrew Wilkinson had tweeted something out like this. That was like you know you know you learn to learn to crawl or learn to walk before he realized. He's like most most people who want to do a big crazy, ambitious thing should start by doing a smaller thing, so they learn how to do business. And then do you make things happen? And then graduate up and a bunch of people were agreeing with him. I totally disagreed. I was like, if you know the thing you want to do
She just go do the thing, you know, the way that doing something before you do your bigger thing works? Well, I believe is at first, that was the biggest thing you knew. Yeah. And then as you did it, your worldview expanded, and your ambition expanded, and your exact set of possibilities, you were aware of expand it and then you went and did that thing. However, Elon did reply almost confirming, what Andrew has had for him and his case. He was like, yeah, you know, I couldn't have created Space X. If I didn't have the money and the skills
Reputation as I had during zip to and specifically, somebody had said that like, they had talked to Ilan and he, you know, I don't believe this for the, for the record. I don't believe a word of this, but they were like, yeah, I talked to Elon early on and I talked to Ilan and he said that early on, he decided I want to die on Mars, just not, he said the following, I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact, you know, that's like his joke and then he's like, and I decided the way to do that was I needed a lot of money. And so then I went to the internet just to
Go get the money quickly, you know, as quickly as I could, I don't believe that to be true because you know, first of all not everybody is like that much of a mastermind. You know, when he was like sleeping under his desk as like a college kid, I don't think that he was like being like I'm only doing this so that I could amass a fortune to launch three, spaceships, you know, to be able to fund three of my own ships and I don't believe that also he went and did X after zip to. So it's like if you're already had, you know, whatever though. You know, I don't know what you need. I think like some like sick.
80 million dollars at a zip to. Like, I'd be surprising to me if he was like, you know what? It's not going to be enough. I need to go get to 250 million. That's the magic number.
Yeah, there's a big question about, yeah. Like like should you ever sell a company? Because if, if your real goal in life is to have an impact on the world, maybe the company is the best way to do that. And so, you should just continue to run your company. Endlessly. I mean, you guys, we everyone on this call solar companies. Well, my goal is very simple. Yeah, well, yeah, what's your goal?
You said, like, if you want
I have Maximum Impact on the world, that is not my goal. And so, it's very easy for me to just be like, oh, cool, I can rule that out. I'm trying to have the best lifestyle that I could have. That is my selfish and very transparent goal. I am trying to improve my quality of life and with that comes my family's quality of life. With that might come living in a good place and being being a happy content. Person walking around the world is my contribution to society. I don't feel the obligation to go save the world, but
personally, I mean, the beauty of that, is that like by you will naturally
Have a positive impact on the World by doing what you do to achieve those ends. It might not be as big as you got us. You cured cancer. Got us to Mars, but like, there's going to be economic activity that provides value and utility to various people as you like go about your business. And as long as you have like a moral compass, that doesn't that doesn't result in you doing something really unethical like you'll probably have a net positive view on society. Like my trainer has a great way
of saying this he goes, you know, we I was like yeah, my goal is to like have an amazing lifestyle quality of life, right?
That's my number one. Like, you know why I do things is around that does this improve my quality of life. So if I go do this thing, I'm stressed out all the time and I have meetings all the time. I don't see my kids. No, no, you've it is not improved my quality of life, but he said, the other thing he said is mutually beneficial. So that all the things I do are mutually beneficial to the people that interact with us. If I make a product and these to be mutually beneficial to them, if I have a partner or I interact with somebody, it needs to be mutually beneficial it. So that's the only caveat that we added too much. Make it you know work is your personal
trainer, like your life coaching.
Yeah yeah yeah that's like a that's a recurring theme is Shawn's personal trainer John you you're cool because you I think you're like us but maybe even more extreme in the tech world and that you have your foot in the startup world and you're hanging out with these bigwigs, but you're also can just joke around and shoot the shit and like, you're pretty self-aware. Whoo. What do you align with? Who do you align with politically? Oh yeah, I really like this guy Mark Hurd. Who's a republican from Texas?
He was he's a smaller candidate, so he's not pulling super well, but he worked for the CIA and he also was on the board palantir and he would be the first computer scientist president. And I think that that would just be very, very interesting to see someone with a CSS background. Obviously, I love programmers and I think that they think about the world in very interesting ways and we've had this very long, true Long Arc of, you know, lawyer lawyer businessman.
Lawyer lawyer, right? Like that's the story and he's like a younger guy. So I'm proud to endorse him a. You more Republican than Democrat or do vote both. Yeah, yeah. I vote both. It just kind of depends on who is who can have like the highest impact on mostly technology and the business Community. I think that those are kind of the things that we need to be thinking about. I do think there's the interesting as I look back on Trump. I didn't vote for him, didn't
support him voted against him twice, but but I think that there's this weird situation where like, the problems that Trump brought were obviously really bad. I think you really like divided the country and just create a lot of chaos and I think that was like, probably net negative for the United States. But he did kind of get China, right? And he started this, like he got people waking up about the fact that we are in a great power competition again. And so you can see a world where the China situation
Dissipates and things get better. And that would be phenomenal for the world and that's what I hope happens. And in that case, Trump will be remembered as like an idiot. Basically, but the opposite could also happen where the China situation gets hotter and then people look back to Trump as like a like a genius who foresaw this all in like took the first steps to like make things safe. And so I think the what's interesting is that though, the way we remember president's is often not by what they actually did but by how they're
Decisions. Look in hindsight. And it comes back to the, you know, don't judge a venture investment until it's 20 years later, 10 years later, the same thing. It's like, like maybe we shouldn't judge our presidents until we you know, with the full History of
Time.
You had said something earlier about, like you're working on natural language, generation and 2013. Yeah, now these large language model, ah, is all the rage and you had an idea around this that I liked because it was very different than how most people most investors talk about this. So you had said something like everybody is knocking certain AI startups because they're always just a wrapper on top of GPT. It's just a wrapper on top of what open eyes doing. It's a flimsy little thing. You had a different take. What's your take?
My take is that.
That might be a reasonable critique for a growth stage venture capitalist to debate with their Partners at an investment committee meeting. That is not necessarily what we should be putting out on Twitter acts to the next generation of young Builders and if you are, you know, I know a lot of these kids or Seventeen eighteen nineteen and they're hacking and building Chachi PT wrappers. And some of them are making a ton of money and
It's fine, what's an example? Yeah, I mean, like an example would be like, like, just just narrowing down to something very. There are a few people that have done, like, like, almost like dating coaching kind of like to help with if you're bad at texting. I there was a whole South Park episode about this. We're pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're, if you don't know what to text someone like a dating app, you can have like it. You can go to church. You can't even say hi. I'm on Tinder and I need to send
A response to this girl. And I feeling awkward, like, what should I say? And it'll give you a recommendation. But these apps have kind of like fine-tuned it to be a little bit more like spicy or, you know,
engaging with her homework help. They'll do rap lyrics, they'll do whatever.
Yeah. And I don't know the details about those but a lot of people will be like oh those aren't appropriate for Venture Capital there? For like they should not be built and this is kind of where I'm flip-flopping to my, you know, lifestyles are bad. It's like no. Actually, these are phenomenal because we need these these
Like people to get experience building. And I think maybe I think about it even less from the economic side and more from just the experiential side of like if you ever talk to somebody who's like they were able to, you know, run some small business, when they were in high school that's always a bull signal for entrepreneurship. Like there, it's always like, oh, you're in. Now you're doing the Venture
back, things going to make a lot of money like it doesn't matter. What the thing
was, right. It's like, oh, I was hustling sneakers, or oh, I was like selling reselling concert tickets.
Like my thing was, I bought DJ equipment in the United States and then I would export it to Australia and I was just like, hustling that stuff in high school like everyone has one of these stories. I'm sure you guys have tons of told them the Pod. But so basically with the with the weenie I want the lens for chat GPT moment, so lenses for those of you who might not remember, was I don't know what that is. So if this app that you would download and you upload, you know, 10 selfies of yourself from your camera.
All. Yeah, and then it would generate a i images that looked like you so it would be like it that looks like Sam's face but it's on Superman or wasn't but it was really like a Russian company. That was, that was the rumors that it was a Russian company, think that one was. But yeah, I mean, there are some weird like these apps come from all over. I'm not sure about lens AA. I think I do iÃve just, haven't looked into the company
but and it made a bunch of money. It was like number one in the app store for a
bit. Yeah. Yeah, it was based on it was based on stable diffusion, which is this open?
Source software package and dream Booth. Which was this paper that Google put out that then people went and implemented like no one knew what those things meant. No one your aunt doesn't know what stable diffusion or lens or dream Booth is but she probably downloaded and paid for lenses, magic avatars and had that as a profile picture for a little bit. So just like this, this fun viral moment that was really successful. And I think that there's a lot of people who I would hate if they're toying around with chat GPT and they don't build something. That's really
Finding cool because they're like, oh well this won't be like hyper scalar come binding. Like generational company. It's like maybe you just need to go build the fun thing and put it out there and see how it goes. What would be something you build. So I have an idea about this which is basically that there's a few things that these that these systems are really good at, you know obviously there's been huge progress in helping software developers program with GitHub copilot which is you know built by open AI under the hood. There's also
You know, just the Google use case, like I go to church EPT all the time, just ask you questions that I would normally ask Google, people are doing a lot of, like, AI girlfriend stuff. Like, you know, Sean. I'm sure. You're, you're next, you're next big. Only fans investment will have an AI component, probably but, but I think that that that one of the interesting things that these language models are particularly good at is something called the Barnum effect. If you guys heard about this now. So the Barnum effect is this psychological phenomenon where
Like I can say a like something that sounds like it's very specifically tailored to you but it's actually vague and applies to everyone. So, so an example of this would be Sam. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned in to your advantage like these things resonate with everyone. They certainly resonate with me. I feel like yep. Yep yep.
But and they feel personalized. It's like astrology it. Yeah, they use this in astrology. And so what I'm thinking is like, someone should take the, you know, chat GPT Allah ends and make some sort of like viral personality
quiz viral astrology
app. Something along those lines that Miss Cleo. Yeah, that X that that exploits, this effect that lme's are really really good at and then and then uses it, it's just like, yeah, you, oh yeah, did you get your personalities? He's like, did you get your lens a magic avatars? Like yeah, I got them like I had
The in-app payment. It was 599. It's like, oh did you well did you get your custom personality test through this chat bot, that's new and going viral. Like yeah, sure I did
that. I think that's a great prediction. I think that's going to happen very soon. This will look back at this clip and be like, did he called it John called it? That, that was going to happen. It has to happen. Somebody said this the other day, they go, they showed me under the show. Me a Steve Jobs clip in Steve Jobs goes.
Once this technology happened, the there was a set of 20 things that we're going to happen no matter what. It didn't matter who was going to do them, they were going to happen. A series of events were going to unfold once that breakthrough once that first breakthrough happen. And you just didn't know when or you didn't know who but you definitely knew that they were going to happen. That's how I feel about this idea. I love it.
I'm glad I'm glad I got the thumbs up on. Oh my oh my,
yeah, your ideas. We're actually very, very, very solitary. You, you said you did your high school flipping thing. You also were a what was it called, like, a phone at
Elemental marketing, scam artist telemarketing skills, that story will wrap on that. So that this is a phenomenal story. We like workaholic, yeah, yeah, a little bit, I use the office as a reference point because that is the default like small business.
In America, you know, they make a thing and then they ship it out. And so the scam worked like this. I found the job on Craigslist, I show up and I'm wearing a suit. I'm probably 17 years old or something and I'm like, I brought a resume I want this job and they're like, it's not that type of a job. Like you do not need to be wearing a suit, just sit over there, you're going to call these numbers, call down the list and when they pick up, read this script. And the script goes like, something like this. I probably still remember by heart but it was like,
When they pick up, you do not ask how they're doing. You do not talk to them, you just say shipping Department, please. And you want to make it sound like you've been disconnected. Like, I was already talking to other shipping Department. Half the time. People are like, what are you talking about? This is a law firm. We don't have a shipping department, but the other half of the time people are like yeah, we gotta shipping Department. I'll transfer you down there. Like you must've just gotten disconnected, then you're down in the shipping department. So imagine Dunder Mifflin from the office, you know, you just talk to Pam.
Pam transfer you down to. I think Darrell is down in the shipping Department, right? And now you're talking to the guys down in the shipping department and the scam was selling 2 inch clear tape. So the guy picks up from the shipping Department, was shipping Department, you know, John here or Daryl and, and you say, hey, your, you guys are still using the 2 inch clear tape, right? That was the line. So, this is the secret. It's like it's like asking office. They use eight and a half by 11 inch paper or like asking you know a podcaster like do still
Microphones. You know, it's like, yes, everyone uses two inch. Clear tape in a shipping Department because what you use to just take boxes. It is your tape that you use to pack things packing tape and so they're obviously going to say, yes, but it sounds like you've already sold to them. You know, you're still using the 2 inch clear tape, right? We didn't say that we sold you, but then then if they say yes, then you say, you know, hey, I just want to, you know, like thank you, not for being a customer. Just thank you. I want to thank you.
You and we're going to send out. I want to send out another box, so that 2 inch clear tape for you guys, and I'm going to throw in a Starbucks gift card for you. Personally, your name is going to be on it. This is one's for you and I and and they're running me through this time. Like how much of the Starbucks gift card for? I'm like, a, I need information. I'm like, I'm obsessive about information and so he's like, don't worry about it. And I'm like, no, but like I need to know because like what if they ask me, then they'll never asked you. And I was like, no, but I have to know like I just I cannot do this job unless you tell me.
He was finally, like, it's five dollars. Wow. So so they so they, you know, they do like the Starbucks gift card thing, they get the guy to say, you know, yes, I'd like, you know, I'm still using it, send it out and then they send it out with an invoice. So you don't need to collect the credit card details over the phone. They send it out with the invoice and they've priced. This clear tape at exactly the level that they think most accounting Point accounting departments will just stamp it. So it is 500 dollars for a box of clear tape.
Tape and it cost them five dollars to produce this tape. How much money did the company make millions? I mean, the guys were like driving around in sports cars like and I ran the numbers and it was like, you know, while I was there I only work there for one day and then like I quit because I was like this is a scam. I figured it out like almost immediately but a lot of people stuck around like you know. But even then I think I think I sold thousand dollars of clear tape and they're just going to get that one sale and the conversion rate is insane. Yeah. So they send out. I talked to the guys in our shipping Department of the scam.
And and I first off hilarious, the guys don't use their own clear tape because it just falls apart, it just disintegrates it's like the worst product. They buy the stuff that gets thrown away in China. They basically like, like if they have manufacturing defects, that's what they buy for like 10 cents and then they sell that for five hundred dollars which is already an order of magnitude more than you could just get from Staples. Are they, are they still doing this scam? I don't know, I don't think so. They had like an F from the Better Business Bureau. And then like, I imagine that it like dissolved.
They probably got like all their phone numbers blocked or something. What did these guys look like? Did they look like what? I think they would look like. I imagined they actually looked exactly like the three of
us
which is what I thought. I think I think the I think the CEO had your jackets. Say
I drive a black Escalade. Yeah
I think that was like the big move. There's some guy.
Listen to this.
In a shipping Department, that just had a holy fuck moment, he's like that, goddamn, not that tape guy who keeps calling me this gift
of it and then there's like and there's like a thousand other people are like. So, how do I get the leads to the shipping companies? Yeah, I've been the tape business towel, boy,
the Gainesville state
things. I ran into a guy who'd worked there a year later and he came up to
To me, I was at a concert and, and he was like, oh,
John, like I Remember You The tall
guy. Like, how's it going? I was like, remind me where we know each other from, he's like, Delta shipping. I was like, oh, yeah, I worked there for like a day, like, what's up? Like, are you still there? He's like, now they fired me and they fire. Everyone like through every three months because they need to turn people over, because as soon as one person finds out, it's a scam, they will tell everyone else. It's the same thing with like a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme. Like you got to like excerpt, you got to like, you know, get out anyone who knows the truth and keep the blinders on.
Everyone who's there? Because as soon as soon as one person figures out there going to tell other people be like, don't you think it's kind of unethical what we're doing or don't you think this is like what if the police come like would we be in trouble? You know, and then that scares everyone and then the whole thing, the whole well, is poisoned, so I'm like, oh, you got fired. Like that's, I'm sorry, man, that's tough. Like, what are you doing now? Hopefully, you got like a better job. He's like, yeah. I'm selling drugs at this concert. That's like what? Ha ha.
Ha ha.
Tell people what your YouTube channel is and also tell us why are you doing YouTube? You could be going out there build another business but you're like as you're creating content so tell people what the channel is and why you do
it. Yeah, I mean Mason just bored during the pandemic had always been. I mean, our first viral success its soil. It was, you know, content and content, super important for launching companies and I'm an entrepreneur. So, having a voice is very important in.
Equation. My YouTube channel, you can find it, just John Coogan search there. I also have a podcast Now, power law dot. F m power law hosted by John Coogan. Not an interview show. It's just kind of deep Dives on these power-law people and companies these really good name. It sounds good titles. That's a good idea. Yeah. It's so it's it's interesting. It's yeah, it's a lot of fun. I just I really liked it and yeah, check it out and I the biggest problem with it is that I don't have a lot of focus. I'll talk.
About geopolitics. My last video was on Doug, gemoro breaking down his business. Like I just, I'm all over the place, but, but it's so much fun and like there's clearly value in what we do. Like people enjoy, it makes them happy. And you meet interesting people. We got to have a great conversation because of it, you know, we appreciate you coming on. This has been really fun. Your, you're cool man. We this has been awesome. We appreciate, hey, way. And we don't have a lot of focus either. Look, we went from scams to Who you gonna vote for the guns through, you know, this is I this is like
You your audience. You won't be perfectly optimized. Like, oh, we're like the best ever, but then terms of the lifestyle, like we all agree. Like this is the way to run the content machine. Don't don't go too crazy with it. Thank you, we appreciate it and thanks for coming on and that's the pod.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to
travel. Never looking back.
