My First Million - #138 - How A Big Bitcoin Bet Paid Off, How To Best Learn From Billionaires, And Should Engineers Have Managers?

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss: 5:53 Dan Gilbert owns the Cavs...and a lot more 11:48 How Dan Snyder made his billions 13:40 How to pounce on new opportunities 20:20 MicroStartegy's big bet into bitcoin 29:00 The right way to learn from billionaires 34:24 The big business of lawn care and pest control 40:08 A company licensed GPT-3 - three months later they make $20k/month 42:03 Manager's for engineers? 46:58 How big companies work vs startups Thank you to our sponsor this episode, Flatfile! Spend less time on Excel and more time building your business by easily importing data using Flatfile. Check them out at flatfile.io/hustle. Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. All right. I think we're live. Are we live? We're live.

You look really bad. Thank you. Yes, I'm very cold. Very tired. I think it shows. This is tangentially related to business, but I wanted to bring something up to you. I've lived in Austin now for,

I've been in my house that I just bought for like five days. I've been living in the city for six weeks now. I don't know how long. Everyone is talking about moving to Miami and Austin and maybe a little bit of Nashville. Where else? I think that's right. I hear Austin and Miami the most.

I hear Austin and Miami the most. And I hear Austin the most. And basically for anyone who's not in our little silly bubble, which I bet actually most people are. People are leaving New York, San Francisco, and L.A., and maybe a little Chicago, and they are moving to Austin. And so far, I'm going to sound like a snob, but so far, my takeaway is that Austin is cool. It sucks right now. It's a very ugly city in the winter.

It's a nice place to live. It's easier living, but I miss a lot of the, I don't know how to describe it, worldly stuff of New York. San Francisco in L.A. Like, for example, when I go and get coffee from a famous coffee place in New York or do something in San Francisco or something in L.A. that's supposed to be like the hottest thing going, it's safe to assume that that person might be in the top 5% of their category in the country. And I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. Whereas in Austin, I've been here. And there's been multiple times. And I'm not that snobby of a person, but I'll ask for like a particular type of coffee. Like really simple, like an Americano.

Like, I don't think that that's considered snobby anymore. Right. And they don't do it. Doesn't that mean I don't drink coffee? Isn't that the most basic coffee? Doesn't that just mean like just coffee and none of the fancy shit? It's like the third most basic thing. So there's like drip coffee.

And then there's like fancy versions of that like pour over. And then Americano is just hot water and espresso. So you need an espresso machine, which it's not like that fancy anymore. It was considered fancy. But now it's just table stakes. But like small stuff like that, it makes me appreciate San Francisco. There's a little bit of boozy in you. And that little bit of boogie is missing the boogie treats that you get in San Francisco and New York.

Well, and also, like, for example, Austin's been pretty good. But do you realize that all of our friends in San Francisco and almost all of my friends in New York and, like, my family friends in New York, they're all immigrants who came from a variety of different places, lots of different religions. tons of different ethnicities, and it was so cool. And like a lot of people, like you went to Duke, we have friends who went to some of like really elite universities. And then we have friends who are high school dropouts. And that, like, I don't know what you want. Yeah, I love that.

I love it. I love it. And it was awesome. And I haven't had that here yet. Well, I hope you miss it. And I hope that people move back to the Bay Area at some point. But I feel like this was a one-way ticket for for most, I believe. I am not sure yet.

Maybe. Maybe not. I think come when the weather gets warmer, I think Austin is going to be so fun and so great. But I don't know. You know, maybe now's a good time to buy a place in San Francisco or New York. Yeah.

You know, I think there's definitely like a closer knit thing now of the people who are left. Like when I do a call, and I'm like, oh, where are you based? Like Bay Area. I'm like, oh, me too. It's like a novel thing. Whereas before I didn't even ask the question.

It's like, yeah, of course. Like if you're in the tech industry, you're almost always here unless, you know, I can tell that you're somewhere else. And now it's like, oh, you're still here? Cool, cool. We should meet. We should, you want to go for a walk?

And so there's like, I think a lot of us who are still here are like, all right, fuck it. Fuck everyone who left. We're going to become like close. And we're going to like create, you know, we're going to build this thing from scratch again. And I think that should happen. I, you know, San Francisco and California in general, LA, there's like so many great

things about it. But there's way more worse things about it. And it would be really nice if some of the worst things could get reduced. done a little. Yeah, that would be good. But the things that are great are really great. Like, I'm driving around here in Texas in the wintertime, it's very gray. It's very ugly. Whereas on the coast of California, I mean, that's like the greatest thing ever. Even New York can be okay sometimes, although I have a lot of negative things to say about that place. But anyway, I just wanted to say an update on that. Everyone's talking about Austin and Miami. And I want to say it's lovely, but those

other places that we're shitting on are cool too. Okay, cool. Let's talk about something else. What else do you want to talk about? Or do we want to try the thing where Abraeu pick stuff off the list and people wanted more Abraeu. And so I think we give him more Abraeu and let him throw out topics. The only thing is

he's going to throw out some topics that we don't know shit about because he looked it up. He researched it and I guess we'll just roll with it if that happens. Let's do the Billy thing because I would love to talk about that. Okay, which one? I have two on here. Dan Gilbert and I

have a follow-up for Dan. Okay, so, Dan Gilbert. So Billy of the Week, by the way, I liked that. We were like, oh, Brady picked the topic,

and Sam's like, fuck that I'm picking it. You just told me to, or he told me to. Okay. He just said, you guys start. Oh, okay.

I thought he was saying, I'll pick the ones that you guys wrote. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Oh, my bad. Let's do Billy of the Week. So Dan Gilbert is a guy who I know because he owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.

So he owns a basketball team, and he owns the company that names their arena, which is Quicken Loans. They do the Rocket Mortgage commercials, if you've ever seen those. He also is notorious because, and I don't know if you know this, when LeBron left Cleveland, he wrote this letter. Did you ever see that?

Yeah, I think he was really angry, right? He was really angry, and he wrote it and he printed it or published it as a image. And it was written in Comic Sans, like a blue or red Comic Sans font, which just made his angry letter seem super childish and ridiculous. Why did he do? Was it like a joke? No, that's just like what he was writing in. He didn't do it knowing that that was like a weird thing.

So I found that to be hilarious and most people did because he was like going off at LeBron. He's like, you know, this self-proclaimed king, you know, I promise, I guarantee we will win before LeBron does. And then LeBron won like two years later and, you know, the Cavs were the worst team in the league. So it didn't really work out for him that way. But anyways, this guy's got like a pretty epic business empire. So I didn't actually look up his whole story. but I'll tell you what was interesting. So when I tweeted out that thing that we talked about,

which was the youth combine for youth sports, I got a message from somebody who's an exec at a company that is called Zenith Football, Zenith.com with an X. So Zenith football, they make football helmets and pads. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, again, it's one of those things where if you just look around you, everything around you, a business, you know, brought to you. And so if you look at like, you know, Little League Pop Warner football

and the pads and the helmets that they're wearing or high school football, like the stuff that the school has to buy, who do they buy it from? Like there's a maker. So I started talking to this guy about this company. So he's like, yeah, there's three or four big players.

We're in that mix of like top three. He's like, this company was started by Dan Gilbert. And I was like, oh, Dan Gilbert started this company. And that was the second time I had heard this because the other company that Dan Gilbert started or helped start was StockX, which is a billion dollar,

what do you, eBay for sneakers, basically? As of today, it's a two and a half billion dollar company. They just raised more money. Oh, okay, perfect. So, and it's kind of crazy. It's not like he was just like an investor. Like, he literally was like, this is the story. Now, I don't know how much of this is true versus like, you know, rich guys writes

their own narrative. But the story was like, oh, I see my kids are super into sneakers, like crazy into sneakers. Like, they're all about it. And then he met this guy who had this like kind of like sneaker store type of thing called something else. And he convinced him, hey, let's create. an online marketplace, a stock exchange for these sneakers, because these sneakers are appreciating in value like a stock. So let's make it where you can buy and sell these sneakers this way.

And they created, you know, they renamed that guy's company or that he brought that guy in to like kind of do the operations, brought in another guy to do the tech. And they co-founded, he's considered a co-founder of Stock X because he kind of like spurred the idea, which is kind of amazing. Anytime somebody has multiple billion dollar hits, it's like this person is the, the, you know, they're the elite of the elite when it comes to business. And so what do you know about this guy that I don't? Well, let me just say, I'll tell you this real quick, and then we'll go to the beginning of his story, because I know a little bit about him.

You know, Fat Head? The Wall Stickers Things? Yeah, he owns it. I don't know if he bought it or started it. He maybe started it, but he owns it for sure. Wow. Yeah, so I think he owns like 50 different things, and you probably know of a bunch of them, but he owns Fat Head.

He maybe started it. So Dan Gilbert is interesting. I used web newspapers.com and I went and read about them from these old articles, but basically in like 1985, he started a mortgage business where they would originate loans from mortgages. And I don't know if that means to the bank or if they're connecting you with the bank. It was called Rock Financial. And he grew it. And I think in the year 11, it went public with like 80 million in revenues, like a really good

company. And that was in 1995. So it's multiplied that by two. and that's maybe like, you know, current revenues or the equivalent. And he took it public and then I think into it bought it for about $600 million. And I think two years later, he bought it back for $65 million. In doing that, he made it huge. And they recently went public again and it knocked it out the park.

So he's been doing the same business for a while and he kind of pulled a fast one, not a fast one, but he strategically was really talented and made it work. He also, by the way, it says in late 2018, he bought the online dictionaries, dictionary.com and thesaurus.com. Like, what does this guy doing? Why does he own those two? That's hilarious. That like, dictionary.com would be a great business.

It's a great, it's a great business. I actually have talked to somebody about it, but it's just funny that he's involved in that. Like, I just feel like he's got his hands in several different pots that are completely unrelated, right? He was like one of the kind of biggest investors in 100 thieves, which is a big e-sports team. So he's very interesting as a business

person. I think he's lame as fuck due to that letter. Like that showed me everything I need to know about the guy, but like I think his business stuff is pretty epic. And well, why do you think he's lame? I mean, that was just like a 55 year old baby, you know, no, he's just like, I don't know.

Also, what's this? Is it Cleveland? That's the city. I mean, I think he owns. So he actually is from Detroit. He just owns the Cavs, the Cleveland Cavalier. So he Oh, is it Detroit that he owns? He's a big Detroit guy and owns a bunch of real estate in Detroit and stuff like that, but he owns the Cleveland Cavaliers because he couldn't own the Pistons.

So he bought it where he could buy in. He seems okay enough. I've actually seen interviews with him. He seems fine enough. I don't know. But that's actually a question I wanted to bring up to you. And so you wanted to bring up, what's his name, Dan Gilbert? Another, I think his name is also Dan.

That reminds me of him. And I don't know anything about football. But I think that people hate this guy, Dan Snyder. the owner of the Redskins? Yes, he's a cheapskate or something? Yeah, he's like a cheap skate who makes bad decisions. Yeah, that's like, okay. You know, why people hate these owners is when they do that.

I don't, yeah, I don't know anything about that. I'm not like a man's man. I don't really pay attention to that. But he's kind of like Dan Gilbert in that at the age of like 21, he started a non-sexy business. This business, what they did was at first, they would go to doctor's offices and buy advertising or like by the wall or something. Like he would like purchase the wall or purchase the space and he would get pharmaceutical companies to advertise at the doctor's office and they would take a cut.

And I think it was called Snyder Communications. And I'm not actually reading this off the top of my head. I got to remember it. But I think that in a matter of like seven years, it went public with a billion dollars in revenue. And he was the youngest publicly traded CEO at age 32 and then eventually sold the company for two or three billion dollars to a large. advertising company, very similar as Dan Gilbert. And my question to you is people, like at my age, let alone 22, 23, 25, I don't like, like these guys, like a lot of times they grew through like really sophisticated financial prowess.

Like Dan Snyder, like acquired like 18 companies, brolling together. Like I, my brain doesn't work in such a way that I can like, I understand like some of that, the financial arbitrage. What do you think is in these types of people? And that's what Dan Gilbert did. you know, that's a financial company. How do you think they do this and understand how this all works? I mean, it's like really fascinating.

Yeah, I think it's a question for them. Like, obviously, I don't know what in their background led them to start, you know, a mortgage origination company. That's not what the average, you know, 25-year-old thinks about doing or even has any knowledge about. And so I don't know what it is. But I do know that like, it's the thing we were talking about last week or last episode where I said, once you see a 12, it's hard to unsee. And I meant it in terms of like,

When you see somebody who's truly great at something, you now know what it means to be truly great at that thing. Like before you thought the bar was here and actually they've raised what the bar can be. I think it's kind of the same thing. Once you see somebody make money in a certain way or make a certain amount of money, if you're sufficiently motivated and smart, you can learn really quickly how to go down that path. So for example, I remember when I first heard, you know, what people were doing with buying secondary stock through SPVs.

what I heard, oh, Chris Saka has basically accumulated so much Twitter stock by the time I went public that, you know, he was the largest or second largest shareholder of Twitter, even though he was not a, not a, you know, a co-founder of the company. And it was because this guy who didn't have that much money used this vehicle called an SPV and found capital and, like, was super aggressive. And so that to me was like, wow, I'm nowhere near that aggressive or, you know, like, I'm not even pounding on opportunities like that. I didn't even know that there's a mechanism call it an SPV to do it, but now I do. And so then I started looking at how can I do that?

What I found was like usually it's not the same exact game that you can play, like the Arburt, for example, people right now doing SPACs, you know, they're getting fabulously rich off SPACs. I don't, and three years ago it was ICOs, people were getting fabulously rich off ICOs. And these windows close and like kind of the opportunity to be kind of a first mover in them, you know, slows down. It becomes less easy to win. When you see the SPV thing, then you know that when the SPAC thing starts, you're like,

oh, I see the pattern. This is kind of like that. Or when you see the ICO thing, you're like, oh, this is kind of like that. If you decide to jump in aggressively, you can rise to be like the top 1% early on. It's just like kind of like how Jack was talking about new platforms. Like, okay, I saw that when the Facebook platform launched, there were all these winners. You know, when the app store opened up, there were all these winners. And so when Slack launches their platform, you're like, oh, shit, there's going to be some winners on the Slack platform.

It's worth a bet to go early on to new platforms. And so I think you just sort of see patterns. I would guess that these guys kind of early on got exposed to either by reading or meeting somebody, somebody who had made their money that way. And it got them thinking, okay, maybe I can make my money that way, too. I agree with that. I think that having a role model or a big brother or a parent or a mentor to kind of show you the way and you start seeing what's possible, that's great. What is curious to me is how these guys, some people are able to do this at such a young age. you know, have such maturity to pull it off at a young age is, is astounding.

And second of all, I don't know how to explain this, but with these SPACs and these things like that, I am such a skeptic. And I'm like, there's no way this can work. I default to pessimism and like, this is fake and stupid and bullshit. And it's, it's like, there's no way that there's value here. There's no way that anyone's ever going to do it. And I'm wrong all the time. And so the fact that, like, people who default to, oh, yeah, it's going to work. I admire that.

And it's quite fascinating what the difference between those two types of personality is. The assessment I would have of that is that that's a leak in your game, right? That's like poker terminology where you go back and you look at the hands

you played over this last session and you're like, shit, every time this happens, I'm making this mistake and it's costing me money. I think that's the way to look at this now, which is like even if some of these things are overhyped or they're not going to be long term

or whatever, clearly there's people who profit from every single one of these these like cycles that they go through. And whether you want to do it or not, you know, that's up to you. But I think I used to be more like you where I used to be more, I used to love being the one who said,

it's not going to work. And the beautiful thing about that is you're right, nine times out of ten, it is stupid, it's not going to work or it's a scam or whatever. But one out of every ten, you're wrong. And it actually would have been great.

And that one pays for all the times, you know, that you try these things. And so I think that like, I've learned it's profitable to be an optimist. Speaking of that, you tweeted out two weeks ago, 10 days ago, that you put a large percentage of your net worth at a Bitcoin. Now it's at $20,000. Is there a coincidence? Is Sean pumping and dumping and doing Bitcoin? Are your 50,000 followers and our listeners? Did you just effectively

move the market in Bitcoin? I hope so. That's the beauty of Bitcoin. The more people who buy and then tell everybody how great of a buy it is, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. and there's no accountability, there's no such thing as overhype when it comes to money. You know what I mean? We can all say Bitcoin is the greatest thing and that we're all going all on Bitcoin. And the more people that say it, the more people start piling in. And all that happens is the price goes up. It successfully fulfills its destiny.

It's not like a stock where you say, oh, for example, that Nikola stock, right, which is like this wannabe Tesla. It's like, oh, Nikola's the next Tesla. You'll get some hype. But at a certain point, it'll be like, fuck, nobody buys their cars or their trucks. They have no revenues. They have no profits. And the House of Cards falls down.

But money that, as they say, is the bubble that never pops. There is no fundamentals. There are no profits and revenues that you need to think about. It's just price. And so the beautiful thing about it just being measured on price is the more speculation that happens, the higher the price goes. The more people that pile in, the higher the price goes. That is the beauty of Bitcoin. And that is the beauty of money in general as a concept.

I agree with you. I just find it hard to... Bro, the question I've got to ask you, are you going to get rich when Bitcoin goes up to $250,000 per coin? That's what you... Yes. Okay, if you're in, you're in.

That's all you need to know. I got in very early. I've never bought or sold anymore since then. Good. But it's a substantial amount at this point. But I think I only paid five or ten grand at the time. Amazing. But that was in 2012.

Abraeu, what do you want to do? Well, let's continue with the Bitcoin conversations. Sean has Michael Saylor on here. What do you want to talk about there? He's kind of another Billy of the Week. Have you heard of this guy, Michael Saylor? Uh-uh. He's gotten famous lately because he came out before I moved the market myself, single-handedly.

He also induced some bullishness of people because this guy owns this thing called micro-strategy. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So he owns a company called Micro Strategy, Micro Strategies. I don't know what it's worth. Looked that up for me, but it's a public company. It's like a one or two billion, I think. Yeah, so, you know, a one or two billion dollar company, and they kind of do like, you know, it's one of those enterprise companies. You go to the website and you have no fucking clue what they do.

They're like a billion dollar plus company, which makes me just think I know nothing about marketing. I know nothing about communication. I know nothing about nothing. It's been around. I think they've been around for close to 20 years. Yeah. Like if you go to Qualtricks website, you're like, I don't know what the fuck this is. Nobody would use this.

This makes no sense. And then, of course, everybody uses it. So micro strategy is kind of the same way. but he came out recently and basically bought, he took $425 million off their balance sheet and just bought Bitcoin, which is kind of a crazy move for a company to do. And so people were like,

dude, this is a crazy move. But because this guy kind of started it, built it, he has quite a lot of autonomy with what he wants to do with his company. And he's like, well, I looked at it. We have a lot of cash. And the government just printed like, you know, I don't know, $13 trillion or something crazy, the $7 trillion.

dollars, like some absurd amount. Basically, like, they inflated, like, you know, they printed the equivalent of like 20 to 25 to 30 percent of the monetary supply. So he's like, okay, holding cash is no good. I'm getting, you know, my cash is becoming worth less. Bonds, well, yields are zero. Interest rates are zero, you know, maybe going negative. I looked at gold.

Gold's an option. I could buy gold with this, but he basically wanted to have, he wanted to put his money in a way that would be protected. And he's like, you know, the further I went down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole, the further I got convinced that this is, A, the best way to protect the money we have as a treasury asset for our company. And the second thing is, I think this might be like one of the best investments because I think there's a lot of other people who are going to do exactly what I'm doing, and that's going to cost the price to go up. So he first invested $425 million of their own money.

Then he issued new shares just to borrow money to buy more Bitcoin. So he bought like a billion dollars more of Bitcoin since. And he's already up probably what, 11, 12, percent? Yeah, he's up probably 10 percent already. So there's up 40, 50 million bucks easily on his investment. I found him kind of interesting. So he's done a bunch of interesting things. So I went back and I was kind of like stalking him and trying to figure out like, who the fuck is this guy? And like, why have I never heard of Michael Saler before today? So a couple of things. First is go to hope.com. Just type it in and tell me what happens. Hope.com. It goes straight to micro strategy Bitcoin.

Right. So he owns all these domains because early on, when the internet was early also, he was like, dude, I think this internet thing's going to be huge. And I don't get why nobody's paying attention to this. So I'm going to buy up all the domains I can. And so he bought hope.com, wisdom.com, alert.com, glory.com, all these names like William and Emma and like Usher and Arthur and like strategy.com, speaker.com, courage.com. Michael.com. He owns all these domains. And he bought them all for like dirt cheap early on because he was convinced. that the internet was going to be a big deal before everybody was convinced that the internet was going to be a big deal. So that was like one of his original big calls that he made. And then he since has had several of those companies. It's not just like he owns a domain,

and he squats on it. For example, angel.com was one of the domains that he owned. They turned it into like kind of like a voice operated customer service thing. Again, this was early. He was like, oh, I think that's cool. You can talk to a computer and the computer can understand you and talk back,

kind of like Siri early on, before the tech wasn't any good. But he's like, that's going to be a big deal. And so he built Angel.com. They ended up selling it for $100 million in cash. And, yeah, if I remember correctly, didn't he also start, because he owned a domain name, didn't he start like an alarm company? Yes, alert.com, I believe, is one of his or alarm.com.

One of those two. Alarm.com. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which he, I think, sold for hundreds of billions. A lot. Yeah, exactly. So this guy's had multiple, again, multiple wins. And multiple, in this case, early calls, I would say.

So there's a book he wrote called Michael Sailor. It's called like the Mobile Wave, I think. He wrote this book called The Mobile Wave, and he published this win. This was, I believe, fairly early on. It was at times if you can find. By the way, you are making me so hyped on this person. He just sounds so bold. Although on his Wikipedia, I just pulled it up.

I think he got in trouble a little bit, or he's been accused of some weird stuff, which it's just an accusation. I don't know what's true or what isn't. But I did. Me too stuff or what do you mean? No, no, no. SEC stuff. So he had to pay $350,000 in fines for, I don't know.

That's just a tip. He leaves the SEC. That's nothing. So he started off. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. He tells the story. He's like early on, I thought these, you know, four or five professions were cool. I thought fighter pilot was super cool.

I thought business owner was super cool. Like CEO, that sounds like a good job to have. Professor, I think that could be cool. And so he went and basically tried each one. So he tried to be a fire pilot. It goes into the, whatever, Army, Navy, whatever. And but then he gets medically relieved because he has a heart murmur. And he's like, shit, okay, I can't do that.

All right, so back to the drawing board. What's number two? Okay. I'm going to do, I'm going to be a CEO. And so he went through several of these. And he tells these stories. He tells like some pretty interesting stories. I encourage people to check him out.

I'm not going to repeat his whole interview. But he wrote this book, The Mobile Wave, what, 2012, I think. Bray, is that right or no? We got to get this guy on. I'm looking at him too. Went to MIT, clearly a super bright guy. Very interesting. And he's kind of got this great no fucks given attitude when he does his interviews,

which is, they're like, you know, because with this Bitcoin thing, a lot of people are trying to, like, you know, debate him on it. And he's like, well, and he just like breaks down the case in an absolute no fucks given manner. And he tells these stories. He's like, I started this consulting company, this technology consulting company. and I didn't know anything about technology. He's like, I told my professor, hey, I'm doing this technology consulting company and we're doing it in, you know, visual basic. And the professor was like, oh, visual basic sucks for all these reasons.

You should do it in C++. That's where the future is. And he's like, you might be right, but like C++ is too complicated for me. I don't understand it. So I'm just going to do visual basic for now. And like, we'll figure it out later. He's like, so we grew from like, you know, no millions to like nine million a year in doing visual basic stuff. He's like, and the professor was right.

Like C++ was getting more popular. and it was going to be the right thing. So then, like, when we were at $9 million, we were like, okay, we got to figure out this C plus thing now. Like, you know, it was time to make a shift. He's like, so then we shifted to that. He's like, and then we were doing this other thing. And my professor was like, no, no, no, that's stupid.

Go to this other thing. And he's like, I don't know about that. I'm going to try, but like, I'm just going to keep making money. He's like, my professor, he had his, like, consulting business that stayed at 350,000 a year in revenue. Every five years, I would go back and he would tell me what the next wave is. And I would look into it and I would try. but like he's like he stayed at 350,000 and I built mine to like a $50 million company during

that same time. He's like there's a big difference between people who kind of like intellectually know where the world is going and people who can actually like run on the treadmill, you know, while the world is going that direction. Two things. First of all, what is your source for this? Because I would like to learn more about this person, but it doesn't look like he has like a biography.

He's not, he's only 55 years old. So I read almost no biographies. I just watch YouTube interviews with people. It was a YouTube interview with him and this guy who's interviewing about Bitcoin. And it was like an hour-long thing that I watched. And if you are interested in this, Google the guy, Michael Saylor, S-A-Y-L-O-R. And then if you scroll down into, I always find the references part of Wikipedia because they typically have old interviews.

I think that's like the most interesting thing to read. So he's got like a cool couple cool articles in the Washington, Washington, which I don't know what that is, the $7 billion man. He's got a bunch of cool stuff. And then the second thing that I was going to ask you, which is... By the way, let me give a little tip about how I do this because I think people do this stuff wrong. What a lot of people do is they say, oh, this person's successful and rich. And then they say a thing today, all right, it's probably true.

It might be true, right? Okay, not a terrible assumption, right? If you don't know shit, okay, at least just follow some smart people and rich people. And, you know, you probably end up better than not knowing anything, not doing anything. But one thing I like to do is I go and I read your old shit. Me too. I read their interviews and their books from 10, 12 years ago, and I see what they predicted then. Like, for example, our buddy Andrew Wilkinson really likes Bill Ackman, and he turned me on to Bill Ackman. I'm kind of ignorant of like the traditional financial world. I kind of only

know Silicon Valley stuff. And so I was like, oh, who's this Bill Ackman guy? Never heard of him. It's like, oh, well, he owns this like, you know, multi-billion dollar hedge fund. He's at, you know, Pershing Square. He's got this really interesting backstory. We'll do him one week for Billy of the week and he was like and i was like so andrew how do you like you know this guy he invested in and andrew's company and i was like what do you you know do you like pershing square he's like yeah go to their net assets thing and you could see like they basically own several public companies so you can see what those companies add up to and you can compare that to the stock price and if the stock price is lower than what the actual assets they hold are there's clearly value be had right so i went and i

bought on that trade but i said let me go look at this guy a little bit more right i want to do my own independent thinking about this bill acman guy so i went back and i watched his talks from this thing called the Sone Conference, which is like this conference once a year for like rich hedge fund guys. And then you go on stage and you just make a pretty, you make a call. You're like, this stock is the stock. And so I went back and I watched this from like the last 10 years and I went and charted their performance. No way. What did you do this at? In Google Sheets. Yeah, yeah, it's Google Sheets. And so I go back and I say, oh, he talks about Howard Hughes. And he like gives us talk at the Sone conference. And I'm like, by minute 14, I'm like, I'm trying to buy Howard

huge stock, you know, like now, even though he gave the stock eight, talk eight years ago. And it's, you know, it's very convincing as he talks about, you know, construction and why this company is well positioned, whatever. And I go back and I look at the stock and it's like flat for eight years, right? You know, he has these like really famous calls against Herbalife and whatever. And he like, you know, lost his shirt. He lost. Yeah. And so it reminds you a, like, nobody knows everything.

Rich, smart people are totally wrong on several things. So, you know, you cannot just take their, take everything at sort of their word. The second thing is there's a lot of backtesting you can do to look at somebody's track record beyond their one or two successes that made them big. It doesn't mean that they're dumb, but it's just a really good counterbalance because when you read all their successes, you're like, oh my God, I'm inferior. This person's got the Midas touch. Everything they do works. I should just kind of blindly follow. And what you really want to do is learn how they think, learn how they talk, and you want to backtest some of their predictions just so that you have a kind of a balanced view of them.

So I think more people should do that. So what's your take on Bill Ackman? Do you like him or not? I mean, I think he's incredibly smart. I think he's very impressive what he's built. His track record, he's had so many down years. It's not somebody where I look at and I say, okay, this person has this track record of consistent returns.

That's not him. He's had some blowout return years. And then he's had several years where he was kind of like, you know, below market or worse and getting his ass kicked. I think it helps that. I think that it helps a lot if you're a good looking dude as well. well. He's like a charismatic, good-looking guy. He's a well-spoken. He's a master of saying provocative things, I believe.

Like, he knows how to manipulate the press. He's very, he's like Chamath. He is Chamath of the finance world, as far as I'm concerned. Now, Chimots is trying to go into the finance world, but they're very similar. Chmots not as good-looking, but he is also very charismatic, very well-spoken, very convincing. When you hear him say something, you're like, oh, shit. Yeah, well, when you see Bill Ackman, he just has that look. He looks like he is. Okay, we should talk about this, by the way. So a couple podcasts ago, we were joking about this. I have to apologize, basically.

We were talking about somebody who I had met, talked about their company, kind of like a pitch meeting or whatever. We were joking because their name was a certain way. Their look was a certain way. Wait, well, let's recap. We joked. So the guy who shot talked about, I guessed accurately that he was probably really good looking. He was probably shredded.

It was. And he probably had a name like Tucker Eric. which I just made up, I don't know. And so it was mostly compliments. Yeah, like they weren't like negative things, but, but I was saying it like, you know, I was making fun of him, right? I was teasing him. And so he set me a really angry DM afterwards.

And I felt bad because I don't mind, like, if I'm going to make fun of somebody, I'd rather make fun of myself than anybody else. And I'm not here to make people feel bad. So I do apologize to him and in general. I think it was not a great moment. I was trying to just have some fun and joke around. but I can definitely see if you're on the other side of that, that that sucks. And so it's a lot less funny to that person than it was to me in the moment.

And probably to people who listening who just kind of heard it and forgot about it. So I kind of fucked up on that one. That's okay. That's good. We were a little rude, but I don't even know who the guy is. So I think I'm in the clear. Yeah. Yeah.

He blocked it now. So I don't know if he's going to hear this. Oh, he's that angry? Yeah. He said me like a really long rebuttal and then blocked me. And I was like, okay. Or like, I can't DM back to just be like, hey, sorry. Like, you know, that's not how I meant it to be.

But got carried away with the joke in the moment. Shouldn't have done it. All right, Abrae, what do you want to do? All right. So we talked about high tech. This doesn't seem high tech. Sam, you have Sunday lawn care on here. What's that?

Let me pull that up. I wrote there, I think I wrote that two weeks ago. But basically, this business interests me. So there's a company called Sunday lawn care. Abraeu, what's the headline that I pulled up? That they had just raised another $15 million bucks. Yeah, they've raised like $15, $20 million. from Sequoia, I think was their last round.

They've raised $28 million in total. So Sunday lawn care. I'm not a customer of it. So I'm just basing this off their website. But basically, they sell lawn care supplies. So to have a healthy lawn, you, I don't know, I guess you spray different chemicals on it. But their whole schick is that it's like chemicals that you shouldn't be nervous that your dogs running around while the chemicals are on the grass.

And I think it's crazy fascinating. and I went and looked at some of the biggest folks in the space. The biggest one in the space is Orkin. Do you know Orkin? No. Oh, sorry, not Orkin. Roundup. Roundup. You know Roundup?

Yes. You know Roundup. So they actually got in trouble about two years ago because a janitor, I think a janitor at a university got cancer. And I think Roundup is, I think it's owned by Monsanto. He sued them and he won a lot of money, yada, yada, yada. But they're famous because they're Roundup. But they make $5 billion in revenue off Roundup and $2 billion in profit.

It's a crazy big business, Roundup is. And what Roundup is is it's just like a pretty harsh chemical that's supposed to get rid of... It's like a weed clear, I think, yeah. And another one is another interesting one, and let me pull this up. That's in a similar space is Orkin. Do you know what Orkin does? No. Orkin is pest control.

And so it's been around since 1901. It's a huge business. It's now owned by this thing called Rollins, which is a family-owned business. It's one of the biggest family-owned businesses in America. I believe it's a franchise. And so whenever you have a raccoon or some dead animal in your addict, you call Orkin and they come and get rid of it. And it makes billions of year a year in revenue.

So I saw this Sunday lawn care, and I was very fascinated by lawn care supplies, particularly the niche of this no chemical thing. And there's a lot of really, really, really great examples of that. So, for example, do you know a guy named Eric Ryan? Yes. Well, I heard him at Hudson Khan. Yeah, that's how I know.

So this guy named Eric Ryan, he started Method soap, which you've seen Target. Maybe Target bought them, actually. But you see them in Target all the time. And it's basically soap without chemicals. I buy it. I love it. Then he started Wellie. And then he started Ollie.

And I think Wellie is like Band-Aids that look cute and also some type of chemical-free stuff. And then Ali, which is kind of like bullshit free vitamins for children. This whole thing of like going against chemicals, whatever, that's like pretty straightforward. But I thought it was really cool in the category of lawn care. I think it could be potentially really cool for pest control, particularly Raid. Do you know Raid? Yes. So I saw a pitch deck for a company that was like, we're the D-C, word method soap in the category of, you know, like bug spray.

Was it called Aunt Fanny? No, I think it was called something else. They were early on. They were like just, you know, not too far in. Well, there's a company called Aunt Fannie and they're trying to do that. It's pretty interesting. Have you ever seen a Raid can? Yes, I have Raid.

It very clearly looks like something that if you inhale, it's going to kill you. Yeah, like we had to get rid of it because we're like, oh, we have a baby and a dog now. And like, you know, let's not kill them. Like, let's avoid killing them. Yes. And I think it's interesting. We had, I was at this Airbnb and there was like ladybugs in the house, a lot of them. And they had to come and clean it out.

And they're like, but you have to leave for like 45 minutes. And I was like, but if I have to leave for 45 minutes, because this is dangerous to me, it's probably still going to be dangerous. It's still going to be there. it's six hours. Like that is kind of weird. What do you think about that? And so anyway, very interesting categories that I've been paying attention to. Should we let it slide that you had a ladybug issue and you had to call somebody?

I don't know. Is that I think that's a thing in Texas? Like literally there was like hundreds of ladybugs and we just like called our Airbnb host and we're like, oh, she's like, oh, that happened. Have you seen a Texas cockroach yet? No, is that like what's a Texas cockroach? That sounds like. You'll know because it looks like a fucking bird.

They fly. I don't think the cockroaches in other places fly but in Texas Cockroaches fly around which is disgusting No I've not seen And they're strong as shit Like you could step on one And then you get off and they push back

He's just like cracking his neck a little bit Like oh that's all you got pussy Like You better come harder than that Maybe I do need the rate down here But super interesting categories Particularly Orkin I'm very fascinated by Orkin

Who would have thought that a pest control business Would be that big Yeah I mean anytime you take care of something People don't want to do themselves you know, you sort of have pricing power there. So I like Sunday. I think it's a good idea. Like I think there's a D2Cification of everything, right?

What I think, you know, is really happening with these DDC products, like the common themes. Obviously, they're basically saying, yeah, forget trying to be sold. Forget trying to get on the shelf and Target and Lowe's and Home Depot or whatever else. Like, let's just get on the shelf of Facebook. Okay, we can control that. We can push a button. We can put ourselves on the shelf. That's the first piece.

The second piece is, hey, consumer tastes have changed, but these brands like Raid, and whatever, they're stuck in the past. And so, hey, people now, like, think about this stuff. Like, they think about, like, how toxic these chemicals might be. And if there's a clean alternative, that's, like, good for the environment or it's good for me. There's a market of people who will pay more to have more. They're slicing up these big old brands like that that neither sell online nor, you know, take into account these different taste profiles that people have. Well, do you want to go to another one of Brayu?

Sure. This is one that I had put down. Have you guys heard of copy. Yes. They've just sent me a free trial. They reached out, but I haven't had a chance to play with it. Yeah, I thought it was pretty interesting. We talked about GPT3 a few months ago, and this person actually kind of did something about it. So we used them. We used them yesterday, actually. I said, oh, can we use like one of these GPT3 products to generate a bunch of reviews, right? We had, let's say, 20 customer reviews of something. And I thought, oh, what if we just put those in

and then can it generate like 200 more variations of those same reviews? Because that would be awesome. It's like the easiest way to like kind of like fake reviews, basically. Take real reviews and then just get more of them through this automated thing. Can I guess what happened? Yeah. It was okay and there were some usable ones, but most of them weren't. Exactly.

And the reason it wasn't was because it's just like a stupid thing that tricked the computer. Like one of the words, it like one of the name of the brand, it thought meant like the literal meaning of that word. And so all the reviews were about like something else altogether because it just interpreted, you know, it's like if you interpret, I don't know. Like let's say it's called like cloud something and it's like a software for enterprise and it's about cloud software, but interprets cloud as like actual clouds in the sky. And it just wrote all the reviews about the sky instead of about cloud software. Do you know how I describe GP, what's it called GP3 or whatever that stuff is? So like in the 1940s when there was like German spies, they like, like could like do all this amazing stuff like speak perfectly about uh you know and have it's a very

little accent but then if you did like you could do like two things you'd be like hey by the way german spy guy who's mckey mouse's wife right and they're like huh mickey mouse what's what's mcke mouse's wife's name. Like you have some or like if you say like to hold up the number of the what comes after one and they go two, you know instead of two. You know what I mean? With their index, like these little German

Nazi spy things. Yeah. That's the tells that GPD3 still has. They don't know Mickey Mouse's wife. Right. Yeah, that's that's exactly. That's a great way of describing it. I have another topic that I want to get your opinion on. This is kind of like not a new idea, but every time I hear it, I'm like, it seems like a good idea. Why doesn't that really exist in a big

way yet. I have a friend who's an engineer and they just got a new job and they were basically like, hey, I got this job offer. I'm relieved. I just went through this interview process. I kind of don't know if this offer is fair. It seems like a good offer, but like, how much what's it? I could probably get more. I don't remember. It was like 170K plus like, you know, a sign on bonus of a little bit and some stock. They're like, I think this is a good offer. I could probably negotiate. It feels kind of awkward. I don't know what to ask for. What do you guys think? Should I do this? And then he was just like, I wish I could have like an agent who would just like when I get the job I just say great talk to my agent and my agent basically negotiates it for me and look they get a cut for negotiating anything above whatever the

initial offer was they can keep 10 percent and uh you know they only need to work for like you know the three days that we're negotiating this thing for me and you know the more engineers that they work with the more they know what the like kind of like what the they have more data points right Like in any negotiation, the side with more information, there's what they call it information asymmetry when one side knows more than the other. But an agent would help balance that, where the agent would also know, you know, what a bunch of different candidates got paid and they'll know what's fair and what's not. So what do you think of this idea?

Well, let me ask you this question. How many people work at Twitch, 2000? Yeah. Base pay only. How many of them do you think of the 2000 people make over half a million a year in cash? Base pay only? Like in bonuses. Sorry.

I meant cash, not stock. Very few. Amazon has a limit. You can only make $185,000 a year on your salary, and then you can get cash, but the majority of it is stock, Amazon stock. Okay, how many of the $2,000 make half a million a year in cash and stock? I would say, of the 2000, maybe... 10%?

A little more than that. I'd say like 15%, yeah. So 15% would be 300 people. Sorry, that's way too high. sorry, I would say, I got my percentage is wrong. So of the 2,000 people, I would say like maybe 25 to 30 people get that amount. So whatever that is, you know, 2%, not 20%. So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I think it would only work for people who make

like in the $300, $400,000 range. And you could say, give me 8% of that. So, but let's say you're this person, right? You're going to make, let's say total comp is 200K in a year, which is a normal engineering, you know, take home. So let's say 200K. And if I can get you an extra 20K per year, are you willing to give up 20% of that for the extra that I got you? So I can make $5,000 off this client working, you know, for a grand total of four or four days. I don't think that's how it would work. I think you need more context to have. No, but you don't even need to know the person.

You just need to attempt to negotiate. You say this person has got this many years of experience. they're being hired at this level. And by the way, they're moving. No, I hear you. I just think that that's stupid. I think that the way it would work, my premise or the idea is like it would have to be more personality driven, sort of like an agent for a football player where it's like,

no, look, my guy, I've known him for years. Like, he comes from this type of family and this just isn't going to do, this isn't going to work with him. You've got to do something better. I don't think that's how football agents work either. I think. I don't know. I'm just, I just, I'm referencing ballers.

Right. Like I said, in the, In the first segment, I don't know anything about sports. I think that these things are all really standard, and there's a range. Like literally, if I go into our HR portal today, because I hire people, I could say, hey, I'm hiring for this role. What's the band? The band means there's sort of a minimum and a maximum for that level that they're hiring at.

We never offer the max of the band. We never, you know, usually don't offer the minimum either. We offer somewhere in the middle depending on kind of like where they're at. How do I find these bands? Just give me the bands. And then we have some negotiating leverage. which is if we go to them and they say no, or they say, hey, I have another offer,

then I can go back and I can go to the backs of my band. And that's what I can make the offer at. Did you, so what's the percentage band? Like, what's the, now that you've seen this, how much can you go up 20%? Percentages is hard, but yeah, it'll range like, let's say, anywhere between 20K and like, you know,

it can be as much as 100K. So then if I'm getting offered a job at a huge company, I should always ask for like 50K more. Always ask for more. sure. And you should just say, you know, judging by my other conversations is what I think the fair market value is, do you have flexibility to do that? Or you could say, I have another offer that's higher. Is this the maximum that you guys could do? I really want to work with you guys, but I have another offer that's higher. And meaningfully higher, it matters to me.

So a lot of people listening to this are probably like me now or like you two years ago, where they have very little experience at a big company. I've asked you this many times and I like asking you because you always have new answers, what has changed about your perception of big companies and how that works? Anything inside? Are you being just like this process? Like, for example, the pay. Like, that's very process-oriented where, like, a guy like you or me,

or at least me now, maybe you a few years ago, you'd be like, look, I'm just going to pay you whatever I want. You know, like I don't negotiate in the same way a company does where it's like a set process. Do you think that's a good move or a bad move? So I won't answer that question. I don't really, I always kind of think about something else while you were talking. But I guess I would say one really,

that's become more and more clear over time is that when you're in a small company, you're fighting the market. And when you're in a big company, you're basically competing against each other. So, yeah, I shouldn't say fine. I actually competing. Other big companies are internal. When you're at a startup, you're competing against the market, other companies, big and small. And when you're at a big company, you're competing against other people inside your company.

Ultimately, like if you want to get paid more, the way to do it in a startup is to win more market share. the way to do it in a big company, truly, and this is like kind of horrible to say, and a big company person would say, no, that's not how it works. You know, the more impact you drive, you know, the more you'll get rewarded. In reality, it is the internal perception that's going to matter way more than the external results. And therefore, you spend way more of your time on internal perception than external results. There are so many times where I'm like, we should just try this.

We should just decide and go. We don't need to get their approval. we don't need to get their buy-in, let's make it happen. What if the best way to get the result is for us to change the process or for us to not have, like, consensus or whatever? And the reason people don't want to do it is because there's two things. One, there's a trade-off. Even if we win the battle, we might lose the war, meaning even if we get good results,

the internal damage and disputes that will happen because of the way we did it aren't worth it in the long run. It's, you know, we'll break down our cooperation. The second is, look, for me to move forward, I need these people to like me. I need these people to vouch for me. I need these people to promote me. Therefore, I'm only going to take a certain amount of risk, and I'm only going to move at a certain pace because what's rewarded is not risk-taking nor pace.

What's rewarded is the perception of people internally. So one big thing, for example, is like, let's say you guys are launching or you're projecting trends next year. When you think about you're projecting trends revenue, how do you come up with that number? What do you think about? What are the considerations? I take a guess based off of previous results.

And I say, I think we can improve this. and it's just a guess. Right. And now you have, again, there's a ban. There's a range. It's like there's a conservative amount and then there's like a really aggressive amount. How do you decide whether to be really conservative or really aggressive?

Well, I hope for the best and I plan for the worst. But when you set a number, you set a target, where do you set your target? I just kind of make it up. Is it more on the conservative side or more on the aggressive side for you? Aggressive. Right. At a company, you would get penalized every time you do that. Because you're not actually setting a projection.

You're setting an expectation. It's just like, you know, when the stock, results get reported, the quarterly earnings. It's like they beat analyst expectations by 6%. And it's like, so what? Like who are these analysts and who cares about their expectations? That's how a big company works too. You set expectations internally. We're going to get this done by this date at this level, this number. And so you're rewarded for beating expectations. But you set the expectations yourself. So optimal strategy inside of a company, sadly, if you just were trying to get like further ahead inside your company, it would be to sandbag all your projections and

your expectations and say it's going to take long, it's going to take a long time, it's only going to deliver this much results. And you want to get as much of that as you can get away with, because sometimes they'll push you and say, can't you do it faster and can't you get more? And you're like, yeah, we can, but it's tough. And we have all these other priorities. Do you want me to drop those? And they're like, no, no, no, don't drop those. And you're like, well, then this is the best I can do. And then you want to beat that. And if you beat that, you'll be seen as a hero. There's no, like, absolutes. It's all just relative to your expectations. And everybody is incentivized to sandbag. But in a small company, it's the opposite. You change.

choose the ambitious targets and you chase after them, you don't do that same type of sandbagging. I love hearing these types of stories because this is something that is so foreign to me. I know inevitably one day I'll probably will have some experience at a big company. So it feels like I'm going to practice by hearing you. By the way, here's the other thing that's crazy at a big company is just the planning cycles. Like we were having a meeting yesterday planning for the next year. And then the person in charge was sort of like,

I think in the future we need to start our annual planning. June. So basically, like by June of next year, we'll start planning for the following year, which means you're making your roadmaps, you're getting your budget, you're asking for your resources, you're drafting it up, which is so challenging to do. Super challenging to do. We've had people try to buy our company or invest in our company or just like in potential employees. And they're like, so where do you guys, they're like, where do you see yourself like next year and in three years and in five years? I'm like, well, that's like, you know, like when our company was only two years old, I'm like, that's triple the time that we've existed.

maybe this, but I have no idea. I hope we'll be alive. Yeah, exactly. And it's crazy because if you're planning in June, you only have a few months of execution even under your belt by then of what you did this year. So you're projecting next year, but you're not even done with this year. You only just like implemented the start of this. You don't even know what it's going to do yet. And also the time it takes the plan is like quite robust. It takes weeks for all the leadership team to just like spend just doing planning. And so it's a very different type of thing, but I could see how it's a kind of like a necessary way to do things, I guess. Like I'm sure there's some other radical things, but this isn't done out of stupidity.

It's done out of necessity for the size of the ship. And it's very, it's so counterintuitive to what I would have, what I knew based on my background before this. I want to keep like a running segment of things that you're learning at big companies. I think it's good to learn. I'm also always curious, like if Emmett, I forget the. guy's name who started Twitch, who's the CEO, Emmett Shear, like, how has someone evolved from being a little scrappy 20-something to the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company that does have this process, like how they're possibly able to evolve into that position? Because that sounds

very challenging, and it's cool to see someone do it. So two things. I texted him and I said, like two days ago, I said, hey, it's time, come on the podcast. And so we'll see when we can get them on. But we're going to get them on. And then the second thing is, some other guy was interviewing him because he went back and spoke at like Yale where he went to school. And that guy who was doing the interview reached out to me and said, what question would you ask Emmett? And I said, it would be exactly what you said. Give me an example of a situation where, you know, 24 year old Emmett handled it one way or whatever, 26 year old Emmett handled it one way and 34 year old Emmett handles that same situation differently. And he answered, I don't know how

interesting this stuff is for other people, but like I find it really interesting. And so he goes, let's say, you know, early on I used to be super hands-on with the product or, you know, as that changed, like, we started hiring people who now they decide on the product. He's like, so they, you know, every company has some version of like what they call like a greenlight meeting. It's like, you come in with your plan, your proposal for what you're going to do. And then like basically the kind of CEO or executive is giving a year or nay, like, yeah, let's go forward with that or no for whatever reason. The way I used to handle those were very different.

He's like, first, I used to basically like grill him in. try to catch them like to be wrong. Yeah, like I used to just like, I would read it. And within 10 seconds, I know like either this is a yay or this is a nay. But now we have an hour long meeting. And he's like, I used to either like, you know, like challenge them on a whole bunch of points or like offer my idea instead. And I used to do it directly in the meeting in front of everybody. He's like, and now instead of saying this is stupid, here's the better way. He's like, I have learned the proper way to do this is to then say, instead just ask questions. Everything that I think is stupid. it's not stupid because they're stupid.

These are smart people. So I have to understand why did they think of this thing that I think is stupid? Either they know something I don't and it's good, I should learn it. Or they haven't sufficiently done the work and we're going to find that out as I ask questions. So now he's like, now I ask, I see that you mentioned this. How did you arrive at this? Or what other solutions did you consider? And he's like, that little switch of going from like, this is dumb, why don't we do it this way to why did you come up with this idea and tell me, walk me through your thinking?

or what are the things did you consider and why did you settle on this? He's like, that changes everything. And he's like, then afterwards, I'll pull that person aside, whoever I think is like kind of the key driver of it on their side. You know, one-on-one, when we're not in a big group, I'm not like kind of humiliating them in front of other people, I'll say, you know, hey, like this either, you know, just wasn't up to the standard we need, you know, or like, you know, I just really disagree with this one point and here's my perspective.

I just want to give this to you. And then as you go back for V2, like you'll have, you know, my opinion here. It's just an opinion, you know, like, but here's what I'm thinking. That's been a big difference for me. Well, I think that's insightful, and I hope to have him on so I can ask him all about that. Yeah. Because he started his company as, I think, freshly out of school and probably has never had a different job. So it'll be exciting to hear what he has to say.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, cool. We're out of time. So that's all for today. How do we do? What was good? What was bad? I like the billionaire talk.

We were light on ideas this time. Well, yeah, but it's your fucking fault. I go off what you guys give me. Okay, well, I'll send you the recording. All right, thank you for listening.