Grubstakers - Episode 91: Naval Ravikant

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Today on Grubstakers we're talking Naval Ravikant. He's known for creating AngelList, getting a bunch of money from Uber, and having one hell of a dumb brother. He was also on Rogan which makes him one of those dumb guy's smart billionaires. We also talk Epstein some more, because that shit continues to be wild.

First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin to start the conspiracy. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. These stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. In three, two... Hey everyone, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. In three, two, one. jersey that's right who uh hooked up electrodes to him and then every time he says essentially he'd get a a little zap not not enough to hurt him permanently uh but enough to you know because

enough that he feels it for a while well that's what it's in the brochure but we let them know like turn up the voltage on this we really you, you know. They're misspelling or mispronouncing names and places. Yeah. Right. We sent over a list of foreign names for him to read. It's mostly consonants that I threw together. Nah, they're Nordic names. Nah, trust me.

Some of these are Egyptian. There's no vowels. I'm like, yep, dealer's choice. That's right. Yeah. Listen, you need to learn how to say the names all around the world we have international listeners and we need an international palette sean so figure it out uh alas uh we are recording today august 19th about naval ravi khan yes we're doing an indian episode today ladies and gentlemen but before we uh start with the episode there's

more epstein news uh steven you want you want to tell us what's going on here well actually okay the the new york post put out an article that was like kind of calling into question the those images of giseline maxwell uh someone just kind of chanced upon her in and out oh yeah there's the in and out thing and then that the daily mail ran this article that was like well this ad for good boys in the back clearly a photoshop even though it's a regular bus station ad for the movie good boys i mean the fact that there's an ad for a movie called the good boys behind just lane maxwell during this whole debacle i mean come on i mean it is yeah there's one of one movie that has boys and children in the entirety of it and it's the good boys and that's the one that's behind

her in this photo what if good boys i mean it's pretty obvious that it's going to come out and be a huge piece of shit and i think there's about a 50 chance that maybe six months after it comes out, it's reported that it was actually put into production solely as a child molestation vehicle. I mean, there's no reason to make a movie these days except for that. So I don't see why that wouldn't be the reason. This is another Wolf of Wall Street scenario with the dark, dark money to Jolo.

But, well, he's sadly not involved in all this. I think I'd respect the movie more if they did have an Epstein tie-in somehow. If they did have like a, hey, what's in this room? That's Epstein room. It's just like chains and whips and stuff. Let's move on. A nice nod to what's going on. I'm just imagining the director

going on like James Corden and being like, one of the great things about this movie is that all the sex scenes, they're real. And everyone's like, those kids are like 12. Is that your Seth Rogen right there? I think he directed it. Oh, he did?

I'm pretty sure, yeah. Oh. That was... So you're hearing Seth Rogen's laugh during these child sex scenes. But yeah, so that photo, they think it could be Photoshopped. What was that?

I mean, there are other things. Like there are two i think there are two drinks there's two drinks and like two phones on the table is the thing i don't know i don't that that's one thing one of the more creepy articles that came out in the post is that epstein um got three 12-year-old French girls as a, quote, birthday gift from his connection in France, who is, I believe he is a Victoria's Secret model scout. Oh, he seems on the up and up. Not the Ghislaine Maxwell, the Virginia Roberts documents where apparently Epstein just bragged to her about how he had the 12-year-old girls flown and how easy it was to get them just by giving their parents money. Yeah, sure. So sometimes people ask us, why do we think there shouldn't be any billionaires? It's just another little case. k i mean there's about a thousand little case studies on jeffrey epstein i i know this is gonna sound um fucked up but i know as a

morbidly obese individual when you order three of anything you're overdoing it right like i i like going to this uh maximum place called takambi and they make a quesadilla and a avocado tostada, which is just like a round tortilla chip with avocados and like some onions on it. And I like taking the tostada and putting it in the quesadilla and folding it up because it's like a New York fancy cheesy gordita crunch. If you know what I'm talking about, my Taco Bell fans. But I once ordered three of them and by the end of it, I was like, this is too much. But three 12- 12 year old French girls That was the most detailed

Analogy for pedophilia I've ever heard But you know what I'm saying though Like I mean three just seems excessive Doesn't it oh yeah yeah and he I mean it's it's Epstein so like everything is beyond the pale But it I love that Gaffigan album

He um Another thing that i saw i so there's this documentary of the family on netflix that i think actually kind of highlighted the mindset of the rich and powerful behind the epstein thing sure like i'm after he sees that there are three of them come to his office he's like oh i am full okay not today boys i my birthday celebration went a little too long last night uh all full up on uh french year old didn't you say that he flew them back after he molested them yep next day flew him back to france didn't even let them have american delicacies like in and out no comment he well okay so here's the thing is i was watching this documentary the family and that uh there was a guy who ended up in one of their kind of youth training houses and they it's it's this this group of quasi-christian people who have connections to a bunch of the most powerful politicians in washington all the way up to trump

yeah and especially pence and the the guy reported that they had this meeting with one of the leaders who was talking to them about king david and how king david uh of the bible did all these terrible things right uh but he was god's number one guy and so he's asking the kids like why did sure right why why did he do these things but he was still god's number one guy and the answer was that well he was chosen and then he goes on to say something that's very revealing which is if i heard that one of you raped several little girls before you came here what would you say i would think of you one of them was like you think i'm a terrible person and he goes no because it's not my job to judge you. You're chosen.

Disgusting. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I want to talk about the family more on a different episode, but that mindset of like, oh, we're chosen. We can do whatever we want. Right, right. That's, I think that's definitely like, you know, people are saying Jeffrey Epstein's the tip of the iceberg. This is another tip of the iceberg.

Yeah. I mean, I think all religious extremists have that mentality, regardless of what religion they're a tip of the iceberg. This is another tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I mean, I think all religious extremists have that mentality, regardless of what religion they're a part of. We are chosen by our divine, so we are compelled to violate the rights and fucking lives of anyone that opposes our viewpoints, which is just idiotic.

I think that a lot of times when you see people who are atheists, they're very militantly against God, and I i completely understand why they would be but it's like you're against the religion you were born into more than you are like screwed me out of so many lottery tickets um but alas this episode is not on the family or epstein unfortunately we're talking about naval ravi kant the avenging angel, as this Dartmouth alumni magazine calls him. Avengers, a symbol. He just put together a VC money laundering scheme. You know, in doing research for this episode, like Naval Ravikant seems like a moderately intelligent person,

but just the level of dick sucking on every podcast he does is just so through the roof because he speaks eloquently and says things that are pretty obvious if you've read any books but because of his status people are like this guy this guy's the fucking messiah dog this guy oh speaks eloquently and is and is not one yeah right right well i mean and it makes sense when you say he does podcasts uh does that include that includes our favorite podcast joe rogan everyone uh The podcast of our masses, Our Messiah, The Lord, The Mecca, LA. Did he get blitzed on Rogan? No, he didn't smoke weed. I don't think he drinks or does marijuana.

He used to drink in college and was overweight at that time, but we'll get to that in a moment. His story is moderately unusual, but pretty typical for Indian people. He moved to the U.S. from India when he was nine years old. And when this happens, a lot of times the father of the family moves to the U.S. first to work, and so that they can get visas for the rest of the family. Wait, real quick. What is he a billionaire from? It's kind of tough to say, but he's a billionaire from investing in Twitter, Uber, and a lot of other companies when they were in their startup phases.

So he was like an angel investor type. Yes. And he got to that position by one of his companies folding and then him having a lawsuit. But we'll get to all that in a moment. So he and his brother so it's uh naval ruby khan and his brother kamal ruby khan and kamal we'll talk about later but that dude's a fucking chode um he's such a fucking idiot anyway is he just a lowly millionaire i think he is just a millionaire but he he has the same job description as Naval.

He's like, I'm a venture... I really want you to watch... Invested in Friendster. He just... His brother, Jeff Navicont. He tried to get in on the Monopoly on taxi medallions while his brother was investing in Uber. Yeah, that is not too far off. I don't know.

There's a little information about his brother's investment history because he's not a billionaire. Just for our listeners, Naval's net worth is $2.2 billion. So he moves to New York from India when he's nine years old. And his father abandons the family a few years before this, actually. So they get to the U.S., but his dad goes, I'm out. And then there's something that happens and is very unfortunate, but a reality of the situation when you're forced to leave your family for more than half a decade and you are working in a new country. Wait, he was forced to leave his family? Well, let me rephrase that.

This is something that has happened in Indian families where a dad moves to another country to make money for the family. And then when the family comes, the person they are is no longer who they were when they left so they choose to abandon their family it's not something that is good or that i'm proud of but it's something that it does happen a lot and oftentimes if you something that you're not proud of i mean do you have a family that you abandon several indeed i've known you for like 11 years all around the country in the world i just i don't know where you hit you got this got this microbe Rubio thing going. I had no idea. Yogi, why are your eyes glowing red?

No, I've just noticed it happening and like, if you, there's a handful of half white, half Indian comics and they have stories where like their dad abandoned their families and then they do Indian accents on stage and white people are like, this guy's great.

It's very frustrating. Fuck you tom talker anyway um uh that guy's a hack if you like him i hate you anyway moving on um so he moves to new york when he's like nine years old i hope that's not just some open mic or no he's he's been on conan um okay let's not get too into the details of the people i have personal vendettas against. So his family moves to New York from India. And no article says where in India their family is from, which isn't that weird, but it's kind of odd. You would think that they would post that, you know, because India is not a city. It's a fucking country. And in New York... It's like two cities.

Yeah. Delhi and New Delhi. like two cities yeah delhi and new delhi um so when he when he's in new york he uh goes to high school at stuyvesant which is a magnet school and from there he goes to dartmouth um there's not much about his time in elementary school i think he was bullied a little bit to uh attest to steven's all billionaires are bully uh rhetoric but um there's not much i think that stuyvesant is where he probably worked the hardest and really kind of bust his butt in becoming a good student. And then he went to college.

After he was in Stuyvesant High School, he got into a Dartmouth college, which he went because it had a high student satisfaction rating and an attractive financial aid package. He was overweight, sober, and a vegetarian, and he hung out at Phi Tau, the Greek misfit house, he calls. This is from a Dartmouth alumni magazine profile on Naval and he loved he loved being at college and but he didn't really care for like leaving the campus until after graduation so he just stayed there for the whole

four years where some people would leave after sophomore year live off campus and stuff oh so the frats were on campus essentially i believe so yeah so what's interesting about frats something i didn't realize until i graduated is they end up being a good way to get jobs this isn't an endorsement of frats it's more of a condemnation of how like our economic system works where it's just if if you're in a frat you're way more likely to be able to get a job right out of college because you got these connections with other people who were in your frat and those people say they've got like a rich dad or something who has a connection to a company every frat's got a rich dad yeah there's a lot of frats out

there only the elite frats really i I think, have that useful connection. Well, no. I'll tell you, though. My first full-time job out of college was I got it because actually Yogi got me connected to a cool comic, Yola Liu. And she recommended me for the job because their former frat brothers or sorority sisters had also gotten that job and also got the recommendation to come in. Yeah, I mean, they're incestuous systems, the frat system. Like, you know, they're built on, you know me, I know you, how about we scratch each other's back. And I think that, you know, college itself is just a larger version of that if you utilize it correctly.

I think Stephen's right that not every frat does that. But even every frat has some network that you could climb the ladder in to benefit yourself. Maybe not. Well, yeah, they don't all get you into elite institutions. But they are very useful for a job hunt outside of college. Were you guys in frats? Oh, no. Oh, I was. A musician's frat. Oh, really? Nice.

I was in a frat as well. No actual house, though. What was the Greek letters for your frat? Phi Mu Alpha. I was a Sigma Mu Kappa. No house, but we got drunk. It was pretty fun. One of the former members owned a bar near campus. So that was pretty great.

That's fun. I mean, that's the thing. Was that St. Martin's? That was St. Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. Home of the proud. So Naval is in college and he's doing pretty well. He at first wants to be like, I don't know what he wants to do. At first he wants to do, he's in college and he's doing pretty well. He at first wants to be like, I don't know what he wants to do. At first he wants to do, he's in college and he's doing well.

He starts doing computer science courses, which wasn't what he wanted to do at first, but he really dives in and starts committing to it. He takes a loan that took him 10 years to pay off to get a MacBook. And then he gets a job providing computer support and database management for DAM, which I think is probably a Dartmouth alumni service. Did you get a MacBook to do coding? I don't know. I mean, this is when he was in college.

This must have been... They're more of like graphic design. I mean, this is a different time. I don't know when this was. This was probably like late 80s. Oh, okay. Yeah, different time. A Mac Classic is the name of the laptop. So it probably was one of the first Mac laptops. Yeah, it was probably like late 80s oh okay yeah different time a mac classic is the name of

the laptop so it probably was one of the first mac laptops okay yeah it was probably really expensive yeah it was a three thousand dollar nine inch black and white screen is what he talks about in this thing okay yeah now i'm definitely against him because he likes mac because he got he got like the most expensive computer to do basic coding stuff yeah yeah that's fair he also wanted to watch youtube youtube wasn't around he also wanted to watch uh ebom's world he's really big into kazaa um he was not uh but at this job do you know that everything at ebom's world is stolen i remember that argument so much i'm like yeah it's it's good stolen content what do you what are you mad about i'm 11 um but at this job it

was his first flexible hour job which was new at the time he could just do his job and then tell them i did this and then he got the money and then after that he did a stint at this place called boston consultant group where and the only thing that I heard about is he taught staff how to hijack the fax line for dial-up. That's the only thing that's written about it. But then after this, he goes to Silicon Valley. Now, what's interesting is him and his brother both go to Silicon Valley around this time, which I believe is going to be like late, late 90s. And they both get jobs at companies.

And they work for a little while. And they quit. And then they start this guy. Naval starts this company, E-Pinions, which is a product review website. And at the time, it was like the number one product review website. This is going to be your early 2000s. From this first venture, I think Naval and maybe his brother Kamal start meeting all the people that they will utilize for the next 20 years of their careers. It's so shameful that he became a billionaire from a bad pun. E-pinions? Yeah.

Why don't... Like, O-pinions. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yes, right. So, he starts his website called E-inions with a couple of other people. But what happens is that him and a few of the other co-founders and the employees kind of realize the company is going under, so they might as well get rid of their shares. I don't know all the details on this. It's very tough to find. But basically, his friend, who will remain nameless because I forgot it right now, was talking with Google about selling the company to them.

And eventually, they would sell to Shopping.com, which eventually would also be bought by eBay. So, the company at one point sells for like $700 million. But Naval Rarikant doesn't see any of that money. And he talks about how frustrating that is because people are calling him to be like, oh man, your company is amazing and it's selling for a whole bunch of money. Well, why didn't he see any of the money? Because I think that the thought was that the company they thought was going under,

so they all kind of left. But what happened was the one dude that fucked him over was talking to other companies trying to sell it. So he was, you know, it's the uh jay-z dame dash move where he's cutting out old partners to try and move up the ladder of uh being your own boss basically so uh he talks about the day he realized what had happened where the company selling is it feels like being hit by a truck when you realize the company you founded is going public

and you aren't making any money people are calling to congratulate you on the ipo and you've got nothing. He has several hundred thousand dollars at this point. So because of this, he sues the other, he and two other co-founders along with 39 former employees filed a lawsuit against the dude that fucked them over, right? And this creates a nickname for Naval roy khan which is uh radioactive mud the silicon valley uh big wigs how racist is it

you know what's crazy it is it's pretty racist i'm pretty sure that like i couldn't tell if there was like a meaning to mud beyond i mean your racism i didn think about it because I was like, I mean, I get it. This dude leaves, kind of, you know, gets out of a company and then it sells. And then like, you know, he sues the company. And then the lawsuit is settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. But this is where he gets his first nut. His first, I think he has like, I think maybe five to like six million dollars around this time. I believe is what he made from the lawsuit.

Mine was when I was 13. So once this E. Pinions lawsuit goes down, he kind of is looked at as like a pariah in the Silicon Valley area. And because of this, he realizes how difficult it was to navigate the whole venture capital fucking trying to get funding for a startup period of his life. So he starts a blog, but this is a few years later. In that time between him starting that blog with BV, with, what the fuck is this guy's name? I will say, you know, if Sean was doing this episode, he'd have so much trouble with these stupid names. Because every guy sounds like a fucking Pokemon character. That's racist, Yogi.

Is it? I'm brown. Can't I say these things? Castest. Not cast. There you go. Yeah, castest. That's why I wanted to know where they were from.

Oh, yeah. Casts are like regional, aren't they? Well, it depends on how you define cast, but kind of. They can be. I got a friend who I just found out was in the Sikh caste. Well, that's not a caste. That's more of a religion. Oh, okay.

No, no. It was like a warrior caste. What caste? What caste is our boy? Me? Oh, this guy? We don't know. That's one of the things that's interesting.

The reason I am intrigued by his Indian status is because he does talk about growing up, he would go back to India and have nothing to do, So he would read all day in his grandfather's living room. Now, he also talks about his mom working two jobs to support him and his brother, but I don't know where they're getting the money to fly back to India, if that's also the case. So it's a little up in the air how much money their family had.

I'm pretty sure that they had to work tirelessly. I'm sure that a single mother had to work hard, but to also be able to afford to go back to India, there must have been some money somewhere else. And the fact that he, him and his brother just get jobs immediately after going to Silicon Valley is just odd.

There are some connections. That's Ivy. That's Ivy Frat. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's probably a good point. Ivy Frats certainly do scratch each other's dicks. Yeah. Okay. So after he he this e-pinions debacle he invests in twitter uber and a handful other companies the number that he's invested in

this point is like 150 different startups since the mid-2000s and because of this he's that's how he's built his net worth according to the Street Journal, there was a profile on him and it talked about every Uber ride that happens, he gets one set from roughly. So basically right after the dot-com bust, he bought the dip, so to speak. Well, and I think that because of his time in Silicon Valley, in working for a startup and then this whole debacle with the lawsuit, like he knows who's big, he knows who's got, you know, the next level funding almost happening to them. And,

and I think that his entire attitude now in how, in, uh, what he's done with his new company, Angel List, among a couple other things is literally, I want to make it easier for everyone else while also making money off them. so it's like his entire appeal now is supposed to be altruistically like hey i'm just a i'm just a guy who's who's having fun i'm just a good dude and it's like

sure but you're also a guy that's profiting off startups you're also a dude who's trying to do like private venture capital wall street basically right where you have listings for hundreds of private companies and it satisfies the uh the the volume you need to just to to make a run at it as a small-time investor exactly one of the he's just earning commissions on it yep yeah so that's and like he doesn't technically make any money from the AngelList website, which is what his current company is, but it's not even a company. It's just a social media networking site for startups to join and for people to find jobs in other startups and for investors to put money into startups that they don't know about

because they're on this website. So it's like, you just created Facebook for startups. That's all you're doing here. So he's selling the information of either the investors or the startup people. Yeah. On Sly, right? Or something? I think he's making a commission.

Well, so it's tough to say because he claims that he doesn't make any money from it. But let's put it this way. Let's say there's, you know, because we'll get into AngelList supposedly has a lot of bullshit startups on it. It's put it this way let's say there's you know because we'll get into angelist supposedly has a lot of it's like you see man it's just like it's a community well let's put it in switch steven let's say that collective hey could you work for free let's say that there's 10 10 startups on the stupid website right and you know that one company is about to invest a whole bunch of money in one of the startups so you put some money in there as well because you see the transactions are happening because his entire thing with angel list is that it's a transparent model of what it could be for a social media

network for startups right but that's not him making money from the website does that make sense and and i think that the entire appeal of him now is he's supposed to be like an altruistically good guy. And it's like, well, you think that you're that way because you went from this radioactive mud profile to trying to now be like the smartest guy in every room you're in. And so it's pretty blatant that what he's trying to do is make people believe that he's just a fun guy. And him and his brother have that fucking bullshit California bullshit california san francisco accent that i don't know when i was growing up we used to make fun of it you know like it used to be like yeah san francisco man but now it seems like that accent permeates a lot of silicon valley and there's a whole snl series of sketches just based on that accent. Really?

Yeah, the California. Right, right, right. So these two brothers, the Kamal and Naval Rubicon, certainly have that type of voice. And it adds to their appeal because they're in the Silicon Valley nucleus. They're in the club, if you know what I mean. I mean, for AngelList, I mean mean it's obviously the appeal of it since like i think the average failure rate for start for tech oriented startups is like 90 yeah exactly it's even higher than the

national average for small businesses and if you go and so like if you're a vc you you need to be willing to fail nine out of every 10 times almost. And if you, for the ones that do succeed, um, I've read before that the rate of return on those ones that do succeed needs to fund all of the remaining ventures that they attempt. Yeah.

So like it just ends up being the case that there's a few extreme winners that sort of, you basically like found your house essentially in Silicon Valley on. And then from there, you're allowed to fail based enough times to win perhaps more. startups and also the these uh i think they're called registered investor accredited investors right i think uh which is like not even like it sounds official and all that but it's really just kind of a nebulous term for someone a really rich guy a really rich private investor uh it's just mashing those people together until something happens yeah exactly and all right if you're not making money from the website itself then i think that's bullshit but i do too yeah because there is at the very least there's

ad revenue to keep the lights on or something yeah i mean he has personal connections beyond that website that he's going to utilize in order to find the winners through that website offline right right in this mercury news profile on him from 2013 he says that on angel list we get 100 new companies created a day and uh between 10 to 20 million are invested every month and i think this is like the heyday of angel list because if you look at some of the like angel list reviews online like that glass door but there's a handful of other things they basically are like 80 of these startups are bullshit 80 like most of what is on this website is junk which kind of makes sense that you would be like i've got a startup and we're gonna do this and you're just

trying to see if anyone would put money into you well if it was 80 that would still be an improvement yeah that is technically true and i think that that's really... At least from the standpoint of the investor. Right, right, right, right. So, like, the need for something like AngelList is clear enough. Right. Yeah. I mean, and so... From the VC perspective. Well, so, and there's a TechCrunch article that talks about VCs hating the AngelList concept,

but then also being members of the website. Because at the end of the day, even if they hate what it is, they still realize the potential of a good idea being on there. So they still have to look at it, even if it's like, we need a lackey to join this stupid social media website. It's still being fed up to the higher ups that can put in that 100 to 300, 500 million that startups would need to really function for years and years to come i just uh went to the website and if you click on the investment tab there's three sections there's the deal by deal investments and it says invest with proven angels

so you invest alongside notable lead investors to access top deals. Review each deal to build your own portfolio. And it's a minimum of $1,000. And you select the deals by yourself and accesses per lead. So then there's the next level is the AngelList Access Fund. And that's a diversification like an index fund. So you build a diverse portfolio of startup investments on AngelList, including private and oversubscribed deals. And the access is broad. The deal selection is done by AngelList.

And you get 150 to 200 deals. And the minimum is $100,000. And then there's the professional investors, is uh personal support and broad access and you work with your own personal angel list representative uh and access is per deal you get 10 to 30 uh deals per month and the minimum is half a million dollars a year which i just imagine someone being like you know i should get. Oh, and they just like type in the URL. Oh, yeah, I can drop a half mil. Someone who's just on the cusp of qualifying for a $500,000 mortgage, like a home mortgage, decides to try and do VC instead.

I mean, just go in like, they go in the next morning and they're like, that was the wrong night to try angel dust for the first time. They like study really hard and then get accepted to Dartmouth, but they also don't get any assistance. So they get like 500,000 worth of student loans. Right. And then, so they have to do VC,

but also satisfy the 7% return to pay off the student loans yeah yeah i mean like that'd be a great american story i feel you know and according to navall the the way he looks at it is that if you're not investing in silicon valley tech you know you're losing out money for your future generations man like you just really aren't focusing on yeah a little bit, a little bit, yeah. I think, ask me why AngelList is a good idea and pretend to be Joe Rogan, Steven. So why do you think AngelList is such a great idea? You know, when we named the company AngelList and made the logo a peace single by the hands, we thought to ourselves, you know, to be a good company, you have to be good people. And what I made sure to do was good company, you have to be good people, and what I

made sure to do was hire people that I could smell were good, because my nose is just, like, stronger than most people's, you know, he's, like, one thing I really want to talk about is his, so he's got a brother, would you mind looking up Andy Kamal Rubicon on YouTube? I want to show, I want to play him talking about his vacation, so you guys can see how much of a fucking raging show this dude is. All right, so this is a video that his brother took, who I'm going to discuss after we play a little bit, of him being in Tikal on vacation, and he's talking talking about the fireflies that occur in the grass at night. It's a video on YouTube titled Sense of Wonder, and we'll play it on the show right now. But I want you guys to listen to this person and remind yourself that this is the brother of a guy who is a billionaire, and people believe

both of these people are really smart, intelligent, and cool. That's where the Mayan ruins are, north Guatemala. So this is the area in front of the bungalow I'm staying at. This is largely a visual experience where he's wearing what I can best describe. Well, I don't know if he's wearing it or if it's his actual hair but it looks like an white Aerosmith wig if I could describe it it looks like the Witcher 3 hair

it's all silver and long and he's pointing a camera at his face and it's bouncing around it's like that stars just twinkling everywhere it's like the video the joker films of himself yes yes not like led as a warning you know on off on off you know human light is we turn that off sharp it was beautiful he mentions mayan ruins uh there are no visible mayan ruins in this video. So this is his brother,

and he's got an interesting story because he similarly had a company go under, but instead of suing and the whole thing that went down, he talks about he was really sick, and he never discusses what the sickness was, but he does self-claim that depression was a vacation compared to what I was dealing with, which is just such utter fucking bullshit.

He said depression was a vacation? Right. That's how bad his sickness was, right? And so one day, Andy, you know what he decided to do? He decided to get up. He decided to write down, I love myself over and over and over again. And he really started to heal. And in a few weeks, he wasn't sick anymore.

So he decided to write a book. And this book is called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It because that's the self-help bullshit that the Rubicon brothers are peddling in Silicon Valley. And this book like became... Did he even try lithium? This book apparently is like 68 pages long and you know, it's like probably a relatively okay self-help book i think the worst

thing about him is they're usually too long so 68 pages seems like a decent midpoint to be like i think i'm done here but you know he talks about like oh i wrote this book and then now you know everything just started becoming better and it's like it's i want you all to know this, that Osho and Jiddu Siddharth are these two Indian philosophers who talk about destroying the establishment and following more spiritual paths. And Naval, the person we're profiling here, reads a whole bunch and he talks about how those two people were influences for him. And everything these two people are saying are just regurgitating those people that they've read in the past. And the reason it's dangerous is because like our Ramdebaba episode, these are modern day gurus that are stealing your integrity and your ideas and presenting them as if they're just fun, nice guys. They're just a couple of California bros, you know? Listen, I'm hanging out on one of the websites of his brother, Kamal Navikant,

he talks about, like, I was in the army at one point. I did this. I was the only non-black, non-female in a black female writer's group. Like, he talks about how he's proud. In the army? No, no, no. This is him building up his reputation on this like

website oh yeah like all the why he's fucking like a righteous cool dude black women tolerated me in this writer's group so i think you guys should totally think i'm cool i thought he was trying to pitch like an army writer's room like yeah you know we we decided to punch up the iraq war no the army thing's interesting. What about a Sumi awakening? I mean, the army thing is interesting because it's literally written nowhere. But then he does a podcast interview type thing with a guy that is former Marine. And he mentions that he was in the army at one point. And listen, audience, I don't know how to express this without seeming like a shitty person. There's a Marine in the army at one point. And listen, audience, I don't know how to express this

without seeming like a shitty person. There was a Marine in the army? Never. No, no. He was just saying that I was in the army as well to a Marine, basically. This is the thing that these fuckers do, Andy. If they were on this,

if they were near us, they'd be like, oh, wow, podcasting. I really love podcasting as well. They have this fucking incestuous brain that makes them think that if i just relate to the person i'm next to everyone in the room will like me a little bit more oh yeah that's that's a totally american thing you realize where it's like you talk to someone like they're a good friend yep and you're interested in everything they're saying you know it's completely superficial um and but but people

on youtube are eating this fucking shit up man i mean like you look at the comments for both of these people and people are like this is the smartest person on the planet i mean it's it's uh if if you're planning to manipulate people it's a great manipulation tool exactly and uh the five the five things that uh naval talks about are important and it's so fucking funny because they're so stupidly basic but it's literally like you got to learn how to write you got to learn how to do math you got to learn how to code you got to learn how to persuade people and you got to learn how to just chill out like that's literally his advice and it's like okay you know learning to chill out learning uh meditation reading books by people that are are more smart than you are and can say sentences correctly, that's a

perfectly fine thing. But to champion these people as if they're some fucking godsend to humanity is just fucking sick. I don't think we've done an episode on Uber yet, but I think the secret's out. They're a fucking terrible company to employees and the world itself.

Wait, what? Yeah, Andy. This German naming company is actually bad for society that's that's my beef with them did you did you see that their their stocks uh um their stocks are crashing oh really yeah they're losing like some crazy amount of money it's over a billion dollars in the last quarter yeah you lose money every right oh yeah pretty much every right well now it's like i think it's coming to a head you know with the oncoming recession they um the bottom's starting to fall out uh from under uber it's not going to be as exciting as uh the bottom falling out from under ge but right right which is i can i just say because it's segue segue into Uber after this. Yeah. The GE thing is delightful because I 100% trust the guy who's going on all the financial things,

talking about how GE is a big fraud, just based purely on how autistic he is. They're like, so what makes you think, why did you decide to look into GE? Well, they came to Boston. I don't want a company like that to come to Boston. They're disrespecting boston so i got i got so i look into their financials and they're doing bad things to boston he's a forensic accountant you have to be like that way you have to be that yeah that persuasion sure in order to do this work one thing one last thing i want to mention about kamal real quick the brother who wrote that book the cover of his book that was published to amazon and not i don't know if

there's actual physical copies there might be now uh it's literally a guy with a gun pointed to his head as a silhouette and in some of the reviews for the books people that are trying to get people to not kill themselves are like hey maybe don't show a person almost killing themselves on a book that's a self-help book because i'm trying to show people that want to kill themselves this book. And it's not really working out for me in the long run. I'm not saying that if you have a book on... What's the thought process where he's like, yeah, people will see it and be like, oh, that's me. Kind of, yeah.

Putting the gun in my head. Right, right. You're probably wondering how I got here. A lot of things happened for me to get here. But at the end of the day, I chose to love myself like my life depended on it. I mean, it's such fucking. So his book wasn't him writing I love you over and over again? No, no, no.

His book, I think, talks about that. I didn't read it. I watched so many Robicon podcasts. I watched the Spartan Up podcast. I watched the Joe Rogan podcast. I watched so many of this guy talk. podcasts you i watched the spartan up podcast i watched the joe rogan podcast i watched i watched so many of this guy talk and honestly i thought like maybe there'll be some wisdom in this and then within a few minutes i i believe that my brain shrunk in size um no um yeah it seems like

the way he did it was he just kind of got connected with the silicon valley i for lack of a better word illuminati yeah like one thing that i've discovered from doing this podcast is in every silicon valley success story there's the story that they present to everyone that was like we had a brilliant idea and we just saw it through and then the secondary story is someone like peter teal makes an appearance uh like you appearance early on and gives them a bunch of money. It sounds like this guy was a lower budget Peter Thiel type and put himself in that position where he just kind of became one of those members. Well, and not only did he do the Silicon Valley stuff, but he also changed some laws because he was a part of the job. The one now? Yeah, he wrote this letter to the SEC that were trying to pass a bill called the Jobs

Act that allowed some of this stuff to happen. Steve, any more information on this? Well, actually, the Jobs Act was called the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, signed into law by Obama. oh thanks obama hey you guys remember when we had steve jobs with bob hope and jeffrey epstein now we have no jobs no hope and no jeffrey epstein it was one of the things this this bill is in the process of doing is allowing for more widely spread equity crowdfunding. And so, I mean, most crowdfunding takes place with donations or you get specific benefits the more you,

it's not a security you're trading or something. Right, right. So with this, you're trading or something right so with this you're taking like you're allowing people individual investors of whatever experience or size to take a stake in a company right and almost as if it was an ipo so there's a lot of dangers in that right yep well um navale was navale was trying to um ensure he was he was lobbying congress a lot in 2011 and 12 in order to make this as the most unregulated version of itself that it could be to where you would have almost like no oversight over um like what kind of disclosures these potential investors would see it's like usually

usually when there's an investment product being marketed somewhere they have a long list of disclosures saying like this is this is risky this could lose value right oh yeah don't put a lot of money in this if you aren't willing to lose that money and so forth and so with private investors uh they do have they there are some regulations on what private investors with lots of money still have to see but i mean largely they already know what's going to happen they i mean you know you live by the sword you die by the sword right like nine vcs nine vc opportunities are going to fail for everyone and you just hope that one of them explodes basically right uh i

mean with your average investor this really puts them at risk so there are a bunch of disclosure requirements that were going to be baked into this law um they kind of kicked the can and said okay with this law we're going to allow the sec to set the rules later okay so he wrote a letter to the sec urging them not to make these disclosure requirements and other protections as strenuous as they would like to okay but for half a million dollars per year you get your own personal angel list representative uh for family offices institutions and active investors your guardian angel yeah you know that the professional investors tier is to drive people to the uh middle level tier that's a it's the same it's the same reason

that whenever you see a um a company put out a new line of say flat screen tvs there's always three levels right there's the uh there's the top level there's the shitty level, there's the shitty level, and there's the mid-level. And the reason the top level and the shitty level exist is then people will be more likely to buy the mid-level than they would be to buy the bottom level. Right. I mean, because he did these things, it opened the doors for his AngelList company to do what they do now. And so he literally was lobbying for, hey, I got this idea I want to do next year. Could y'all make it happen? And you can see why he would want there to be less stringent disclosure requirements simply because more people would have listings on his website. Right. And the thing is that his argument for doing this is that like, oh, it makes it more

transparent and allows people who aren't venture capitalists to invest in these companies. And it's like, you're just saying I can now make more money from people that aren't already well off and take it from a different tier of humanity that hasn't been allowed to invest in this originally. But, you know, startups are risky. They fold all the time. And the fact that they're on a website called Angel List doesn't necessarily change that. I will say that my employer is on this website and I'm kind of tempted to just put in, I guess it wouldn't work at all, but there's, there's that fantasy where it's like, I'm

going to drop a thousand dollars. Just kick in the door of the board meeting. Andy Palmer here. I would like one raise please I wish we had stronger barriers than paid a thousand dollars online

how much money do you think you'd have to spend for me to get you a raise like how much money do you have to raise on Patreon to reinvest in the company you work for probably 100 times whatever the raise is just to get started yeah probably alright well Patreon listeners I mean get on it in the company you work for. Probably 100 times whatever the raise is just to get started. Yeah, that's probably fair.

Yeah, probably. All right, well, Patreon listeners, I mean, get on it if you want to get a raise. One thing I want to... I just want to buy out the company and make myself the CEO. One thing I want to play on the show is that you want to learn

the type of people that are looking up to these venture capitalists. There's this company from... I think they're from Stanford, and they made a rap video appealing to Naval's sensitive artistic side. Oh, God, I've seen these people before. And I want our listeners to hear the creative geniuses that look up to Naval Robicant.

These guys also did Tunak Tunak Tun heavy metal. There's a Princeton flag in the background. Snacking on snacks up adventure hacks. Giving tips to young stunners. Yo, you got their backs. A player in the game, you've had much success. Opinions and backs, nothing but respect.

Okay. No, we got to play the whole thing, Andy. Come on. Our listeners demanded. Invested in Twitter panels to discuss. You were uber-xylied about your business. Andy, come on. Our listeners demanded. Invested in Twitter panels to discuss you. Uber, Zyli, about your business. Saw you on Quora talking restaurants.

You a boss, always bossing about Rob. This only has 330 views. By playing this, we are going to... Understand you're a man that's in high demand. But if you've got one minute for the unripped plan, you are cordially invited to our place in San Francisco so we can run you through the details of a master plan right next to the guy rapping there's a guy with headphones just just being a high man yeah being a high man though not a good hype man by the way literally dancing as if he's been paid from the street oh this is from 2011 they kept this up for way too

long oh yeah 330 views in yeah in eight years but these aren't the guys that did tunic tunic no no no i think these i think these are a much smaller outfit they just have a similar looking apartment um there's one more drop on joe rogan about him talking about income inequality by all means be a socialist with my aunts with my brother with, with my cousins, with my uncles, with my mom, with my family, I'm a socialist. That's the right way to live a loving, happy, integrated life. But when you're dealing with strangers, I mean, you want to be a real socialist? Great. Open all your doors and windows tomorrow.

Please, everybody, come take what you want. See how that works out. Yeah. This idea of income inequality, it always strikes me as a very very it's a deceptive term income inequality well let's flip it around it comes from outcome inequality yeah and the outcome inequality is there because you made different choices now again going back if this is the fucking chameleon that naval robicont is he'll literally say, with my family, I'm a socialist. But, I mean, I can't be that with strangers.

It's like... Well, I love how he's like, open up your doors and windows and see how that works out. And it's like, it's going to work out a lot better for me when you're opening up your doors and windows. Notorious socialist policy, always advocated. No personal safety or security at all. I mean, mean like that whole outcome inequality thing it's like okay that that was some grade a bullshit right right like i get how conceptually that you think that works but that's not taking account into reality like

there's this thing that doesn't even work conceptually it's just wordplay right right but he's trying to i mean what he's trying to say i think is that you know it's he it's just wordplay right right but he's trying to i mean what he's trying to say i think is that you know it's he it's just a creative way of saying that poor people are lazy yeah exactly and so this is the reason why these people are so dangerous because like the spiritual gurus from india that are uh you know fucking over millions of people there these people do this thing where it's like wow what in like smart like a smart, like intelligent person? It's like, they're just peddling bullshit. They're snake oil salesmen. They're literally telling you that you're too dumb and not motivated enough to make your life better. When the reality is, is that people like this person have fucked us and they are smiling about it because why not?

Oh, he married a woman named Crystal cho in like 2013 um she has like zero online imprint she's got a twitter account miss like in the first few letters of uh naval's last name but there's not much else i could find about her but like they're even their twitter accounts are just riddled with fucking like you know like just inspirational quotes and like you know it's this whole Instagram fucking generation where if something looks and sounds like it could be smart and pretty, it probably is. And it's like, no, you're just not looking at the true source.

You're fucking drinking water with piss in it. And you're thinking this is pretty good because I've never had water before. Like that's literally how I feel about this guy. I'm going to say he is uh total kashatrius what i don't know i'm trying to guess his cast all right let's guess the cast uh steven what do you think he is i think he's probably brahman there's no way he would have had enough money money to fly back to india at that age um whatever the third highest one was? Warrior cast? Warrior? Yeah.

I would have thought Warrior. Maybe he's a Vicious. Aren't there statistics about which former cast is most likely to immigrate to the U.S.? Inverse, like different times of... There could, yeah. I bet those statistics exist. I mean, here's the thing. The fact that we don't know what part of India this guy's from

and the amount of information we do know, it's being hidden for some reason. Like, there's no reason for the amount of information that's out about the Ravikant brothers for there not to be more information on their mom. Do you think he killed Gandhi? I think he killed Ben Kigsley's career. I mean, listen,

we have a generation of people that have no sense of community and they're looking towards online media to satiate their fucking need for feeling like they belong. And people like this Ravikant guy is a perfect example of a guy

that's like, look at me, I worked hard and made it. And in some ways, he definitely worked hard, but in a lot of ways, it's like look at me i worked hard and made it and in some ways he he definitely worked hard but in a lot of ways it's like yeah but this this rhetoric that you're peddling is not how you became who you are you got to where you are by being in the right place at the right time but that doesn't mean that your outcome inequality was somehow better than someone else's and the fact that your brother wrote such a shitty book and you champion it makes me so mad.

Like, rightfully as brothers, you should call out bullshit like that. And that dude sucks. I watched him speak 20 minutes, and oh man, it's so much fucking, man, that guy, Kamal Ravikant, count the times he says that the person he's standing next to is so humble.

Every fucking interview, oh man, they're being really humble. They really are really cool and you see the other person kind of blush and every it's just his it's his weird brother didn't accomplish anything yeah well yeah there's like one article that says uh his brother stood by him during that lawsuit period but you know physically yeah right right right right pre him getting sick and i know it's um it seems very very small to look at this guy because he's mostly a Silicon Valley dude. But AngelList is opening up branches in India and around the world.

So this issue of Ravi Khan making this money from this corrupt practice and how he's fucking doing it, it's an international issue about to happen. I mean, depending on how the SEC decides to roll out those rules from the Jobs Act, it could end up being, I mean, our experience with AngelList so far could just be like the tip of the iceberg in terms of like just opening up another avenue to fuck over normal people who want to get in on the equity game in VC. Exactly. But with half a million dollars, you get in on the equity game in VC. Exactly. But with half a million dollars, you get your own personal AngelList representative. And for $1,000, you do get to...

You may select your own deals, but you get to invest alongside notable lead investors to access top deals. What do you get for $50? You get to go to the website. You get an angel. They'll just say hi once or something. They'll acknowledge you at a party.

Let's see. I'm clicking on the join the professional investor program, the half million dollar one. Should I put my info in here? No. We shouldn't give them more of our time. This was already too much. I watched three hours of this person talking.

He had a viral tweet that was him tweeting about how to love himself, essentially. I can log in with Facebook to invest $100,000 on AngelList. If you look at his viral tweet, it's his pinned tweet. It's got like 79,000. Should we list Grubsticker's LLC on AngelList? Oh, I think we should. I think we should put Grubsticker's on LLC.

Connect it to private investors and get I don't even know, gold-rimmed microphones. I wouldn't gold-dip everything. I think that's the Grubstickers way. I think that... Is that code for drugs?

I mean, it's a code for whatever you want it to be. Because if we get angel investment money, I know where my share's going. Angel dust investment? If we get an angel investor, I think we should all get Grubstickers tattoos on our butts. And with that, this has been Grubstickers. I'm Yogi Pollywool.

I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffers. Thank you for joining us. We'll have another episode out on our Patreon side. Thank you very much for supporting us and listening to our show. All of your comments and criticisms are warranted. And honestly, have a wonderful day or go fuck yourself. I love you.