My First Million - #142 - Digital Meet and Greets, A Little Known $30m Empire, And Shaan's Twitter Controversy

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss: - 02:52: A home security idea - 06:02: Wynter.io and other powerful simple plugins - 15:24: Kevin Systrom's and Mark Zuckerburg's transcripts from the Instagram acquisition - 22:01: Shaan discusses his controversial Tweet - 40:21: A digital meet and greet idea - 47:15: Syed Balkhi - The little known entrepreneur with a ~$30m empire 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. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Uh-huh. What up, Sam? I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. Oh, yeah. Feeling like my... What up, Sam?

2021. Congrats. Happy 2021. The best ad that I saw recently, it was a match.com ad. And you see the devil in Central Park just waiting. And then a woman comes up and she goes, hey, are you Satan? And he goes, yeah, are you 2020? And they like, it's like, 2020 and Satan meeting on a date.

And they fall in love with each other. It was the best ad that I've seen in a long time. It was awesome. It was by Match.com. And it was how 2020 and the Satan met. It was wonderful. So you just signed up. You're like, fuck it.

Great marketing. It worked. I'll do that. If I see a great ad, I'll give it a click. I'll go add something to cart just so that they, you know, just reward the ad a little bit. Now that I'm officially like a dad homeowner, I'm not a dad, but I'm definitely acting like one. I've made a few purchases.

The first thing, Sean, tell me if you've made this purchase. A hatchet. Do you have a hatchet? No. For protection or for work? For everything. For breaking down boxes, I bought a hatchet. I like, I love buying things on Amazon that only cost $10 or $20 or $30.

And they're just shit that is cool, but you're not sure if you're going to need it. So bought a hatchet. I got a nice sharpener for my pocketer. knife. Pocket. There's so useful for boxes. What else did I buy? You can buy a blow torch on there.

I bought a blow torch. On there being what? There being the internet? On Amazon. bought a flashlight that pretty much goes like five miles in the sky. I've just been buying all gadgets. Wow. Okay.

I think I made some of those purchases, but I feel like yours are like half prepper, half homeowner. Like not all of those were just homeowner things. Well, they're all, I admittedly, I love. gadgets. So they're all gadgets, but they do kind of have a little protective vibe. But I'm not going to kill someone with a hatchet, but I am going to break down boxes.

And like I just got like a, I got something delivered to me and it was came via a pallet. And what are you going to do with the pallet? Like you got to like pay money to throw it away. Dude, it sucks when they give you the palette. Yeah. So I bought an axe to break that down figuring out I'll be able to break down many things. What's the difference between a hatchet and an axe?

An axe, you use two hands. An axe has a long handle and used two hands. A hatchet is a one hand. It's a hammer with the axe head on it. Okay, great. Yeah, I have like a box cutter that's small and looks like a pen. So I don't think I'm ready for all this. Do you have an alarm system?

We do. What do you have? It was just like, I rent this place, so it just came like with the place. I don't even know what the brand is. It's kind of like an old school one. And then, yeah, we have a bunch of like nest cameras set up everywhere. So we talked about Deep Senadol recently, right? Yep.

I went to Noah Kagan's house for New Year's and he had one and it's pretty cool. It's pretty badass. I want that for a ring where I just have these folks. I don't think they have to be in America. They could be anywhere that monitors the camera and then just says something like, hey, who are you? Do you know the owner? Like the police are on their way.

You know what I mean? That would just be lovely. I want that service. Yeah, why don't you get it? It's available. I've only found it on Deep Senegal and I would use them but I've already installed the ring. And I imagine more people, well, definitely more people have ringed than that.

So I don't understand why that doesn't exist yet. Right, right, right. I think they don't get the live feed in the same way or something like that. I'm not sure. But yeah, that seems like a hack if you could just do the deep sentinel thing without the hardware. Yeah, and the deep sentinel thing. It's expensive, but we should get the founder on it because I bet you it's a killer business, but it seems pretty cool.

And you could also like give, you know, I love these industries and businesses where you can give people like relatively low skilled jobs to people. and they can kind of learn stuff and get better and improve. And like that seems like you can do something for, you know, someone who just gets out of jail or something. Like, you know, look, you just sit here and monitor these cameras and maybe eventually you learn something and can do something else. I told you got my mom a job at user testing as a user tester. When I first moved to San Francisco, I was like, you should do this

because I was using user testing and I was like, this is a great service, right? You build a product. Basically, you just send your website or app to user, you input in user testing. pay like $15 per user test. And basically it's somebody going to use your product and it records them using it and they have to talk out loud and you can give them tasks. You can be like, try signing up. Try sending a message.

Try, like, go to the pricing page. Talk aloud as you go to the pricing page and what you think about it. So you get to see just normal people going through your website and it's all recorded and they're speaking out loud. And so you can see what's confusing, what's not, how people react to certain things. I found it super useful. So I told my mom, I was like, this is great. great. You can do this from home. It takes zero skill. Like it's even better if you're like not super tech

savvy so you're like more like a real user essentially. All you have to do is just go to the website. And if you're confused, good. You're confused. Just say it. If you know what to do, great. You know what to do. There's zero skill involved. And so she did it for a while. And then she got hired by them as a reviewer of the testers. And that business is a great business. They're doing really, really well because they were able to tap into the stay-at-home mom workforce of people who just they're at home, they have a computer, they have their phone, and they want to make 10 bucks per test. They can do two or three tests in an hour. They can make 20, 30 bucks in an hour if they're user testing at home. It's way better than going and doing something that's a lot of manual labor.

I think that company is a billion dollar business. Yeah. So there's this guy. I'm trying to find him right now. What is his name? He's in the trends group. His name starts with a P. I think he's Estonian. He's a copywriter, and he originally had this thing called like copy X-L or something. Maybe a Bray, you can search his... Conversion Excel? Is that what you're thinking about? Conversion Excel. Is that what called? Yeah. What's that guy's name? Danavir Suria? Peep Laha. Sorry, Peep. I know I'm just doing your name up. So he's got... Zero chance his name is Peep Laha.

It's P-E-E-E-P space L-A-J. Okay, that's Pee Plaha. They might be Peefla. Sorry, Pee, I talked to him before. He's badass. Anyway, he's got this great company called Winter. Let me pull it up. And it's Winter with a Y and W-Y-N-T-E-R.

I don't even think you could find it. But anyway, what they're doing is actually pretty cool. So user testing is a multi-billion-dollar company, and it's exactly what Sean is explaining. If someone just going onto your website and telling you what they think it means, Well, they're doing the same thing, but specifically just for copywriting. So if you go to winter.io, W-Y-N-T-E-R dot I-O, and you tell them what type of customer you're trying to attract, and they will go out and find people who fit that demographic, and they will tell

you what they think of your messaging and product positioning. And it's really cool because I actually do this all the time. Whenever I'm writing copy for a sales page, I'll find people who fit my demographic, and I do this just because I've got a lot of friends in the space and I just send them my Google Doc and I say, tell me what you think about this and they hate doing it. But it is so like, you know, they don't want to waste time reading my shit. But it actually helps me so much. And so you could be like, I'm targeting homeowners, parents, men, women, certain ages, US, not US, senior marketers, marketing managers, founders, copywriters. And you could send them your landing page and they give you

your opinion of the copy and positioning. It's pretty cool. Have you used this one? Or not yet. No, it's brand new. For a long time, you couldn't to even sign up. I sign up for beta. And so if you go to become a tester, it just goes to a type form page. So I think the business is less than a year old. I don't even know if they're letting new people in yet. It's a really interesting idea because I thought that that business of user testing is pretty amazing. I think there's another one called the user voice, right? Yeah. I think they acquired user voice now. And I believe they've raised like between 15 to 100 million in that ballpark. And I think they've said publicly they're north of 100 million in recurring revenue.

So it potentially is a multi-billion-dollar space. And I think it's pretty cool. I imagine they're hard to make. I guess what's the moat there? Having a huge pool of testers and quality control. So just like any marketplace, you know, you need the supply. And so there's supplies. You can say, I want, you know, women on iPhones who speak English,

who are in this income bracket or whatever. There's some targeting you can set. And then they basically ping out the network. They're like, hey, test available. And then like within minutes, people have taken up all the, the tests because they want to make, you know, a quick 10 bucks. And so they hit, yeah, I'll take this test. They have the software that does the whole thing. And then they basically deliver you with no work. You don't have to go recruit, you know, recruit users and get the feedback.

It's like, just it's there. And then you watch it. And then you can basically, you know, send it to your teammate, your co-workers, little clips and be like, look, on this page, they have no idea where the button is. That's true. It's hidden. Now that, now that we're seeing them get frustrated and it's so painful, you're cringing. Because you're like, oh, just see it. just do the thing that we want you to do and they don't know how to do it. That cringe is where products get better. I don't know what you'd call those. Maybe we need a category. Maybe there already is. But there's a handful of services where one person at your company signs up and does it and then other people do it and you're like, oh, well, we have a company account. Go ahead. Just do it.

And the initial thing only costs 50 bucks, but you get used to it and it and it removes this small task. So you just keep like using it and using it and using it. An example is this user testing, user voice service. So it's like, Well, instead of just asking Joe all the time, like, what he thinks of, like, this button color and if this just makes sense, I'm just going to use user testing. Oh, it's only $50. And then over time, you like start spending tens of thousands a month. Another is rev.com. So for transcriptions, you're like, oh, I don't feel like transcribing this.

I'll just sit through and do that. I know a lot of law firms, and they actually have associates who transcribe it. And then I don't know if a law firm can sign up for it. But one person at our company signed up for a rev. Now I look at our bill, I'm like, oh, my God, we're spending so much money on that. Another one is Fiverr. So, like, one person did a logo on Fiverr, and then everyone at our company is like, oh, well, I'm just putting this internal document together.

It's only five bucks. I'll just use our... And then keep using this up. It's a bottoms up virality, basically. So you don't need to go to the top and sell the company to adopt this thing. That's too hard. You just need one curious person to sign up. And then the nature of the product is that you're going to share the results.

You're going to share the outcomes. And then that spreads it through the company. Another example. So look, user testing, Abraeur just said, They do over a hundred million in revenue, and they only have 2,000 organizations who use it. Right. They started with, you know, we were using this six years ago. It's a tiny startup, you know, like we're spending maybe a couple thousand bucks a year.

But now it's like Coca-Cola and Hilton hotels. And it's like, you know, all these giant brands that they need their website tested. They get a lot of traffic. And they want to do usability testing and they want to do it consistently. And they have all kinds of crazy stuff that like they can do like live sessions where you can be there with them. It's pretty cool business. I actually think there could be more businesses like this. So when I used it, the majority use case I was using was not actually the usability of our website.

Do you know, do you know where to go? Is this confusing to you? But just do you like this? Do you like this concept? Does this resonate with you? Do you like, I can see, for example, somebody doing this with e-commerce or DDC products where it's like, go shop here and just tell me, what do you think of our selection? You know, what do you think of the, what do you think of the way that this, you know, that how do we compare to other stuff that you use when you shop? and just try to get into the mind of the buyer.

It could be even where you send them a physical thing. It's like we're going to send a sample out to 250 people and then they're going to record themselves unboxing it, using it, reacting to it, and then you're going to get 250 videos back of your product for $10,000 or whatever it is. You could see how this concept of a large pool of customer feedback could be useful for other business ideas.

Totally. I think that you would, I mean, this is a shit we talk about all the time. You just niche down and get super specific. And I think it's really cool. I would imagine what you'd want to do is create like a Google plugin, like a Chrome plugin. And when you're, you know, you're an employee at a company and you're on a page, you're like, review this page, click. Just like, you know, this page looks a little wonky. Is it just me?

Well, let's see what does someone else think. Yeah. Yeah. Click like review. What type of review? Who, boom, done. Great. Well, you'll hear from us in two hours.

Right. Done. Move on the next task. You just spent $50 to even realize it. Yeah, that's actually pretty cool. You could do that, like, kind of even in a micro payment way. So you could do it on the other side, too. If you did a Chrome extension like Honey,

but it's for people who want to get paid like a couple bucks just to give their quick feedback on a website. So you go. And if the website has the pixel installed, it'll flash like $3 for you to give this feedback right now. It's going to take less than two minutes. And you click like, yep, except you do the, like it just pops up in your webcam. You use the website. And then you hit done, video sends to them.

You get your three bucks in your little piggyback. and you just continue on, go on browsing the internet. And you can get a bunch of people who would install it as testers as well. You know what another service is in the same ballpark as us, and you and others shot me down so hard. But I think it's so interesting. It's printing. Oh, physical printing.

Physical printing. Printing stuff, of course, you would need a 24-hour delay, but physical printing stuff using a Chrome extension. What does that have, oh, Chrome extension. Okay, I was like, what does that do with testing? No, it's just like mindless stuff that you just set it, and then you can come back in a few hours. and your task is done.

It's so interesting to me. I feel like for printing, maybe somebody's going to do like an Airbnb for printing. Like, in my neighborhood, I'm sure 40% of the houses have printers. And so if you just created a network of people who have printers and don't

but are in very close proximity, and you said basically, yeah, like FedEx. I'll pay for this print job. Yeah, but it's without the FedEx, right? You don't need FedEx. You just have your neighbor who has a printer and they're like, okay, yeah, I'll take a buck for this.

Can we talk really quick about two things that one thing that you've brought up a bunch that I found something that was great. So you have said that you love looking at internal emails of people describing stuff that was unknown at the time, but now it's like a huge deal

and you like seeing like the early stuff. So I had two things that happened. The first, there was, I don't know why, maybe it's for an anti-monopoly case. For some reason, Zuckerberg and Kevin Sistram, is that his name? Yep. The founder of Instagram, their messages were released.

I have a feeling it was on Facebook Messenger, and you can read a five or ten-page transcript of them talking, saying like, hey, man, cool hanging out. Let's talk about buying your company. You know, look, I'm thinking 500 million. What do you think? And Kevin reply, I'm like, you know, that's not really what I'm interested in. I was thinking more $2 billion.

And then Mark saying, like, look. He goes, you can talk, because there's some gaps, right? Because they're like, let's meet in person. And then they come back online and then you get the transcript period. And that part was like, Zuck was like, look, I can't get to $2 billion. Like you didn't know where the $2 billion came up. But he's like, look, you said $2 billion. You know, just been honest.

We can't get to $2 billion. But, oh, blah. You know, so if that's your number, then we shouldn't continue. And then Kevin's like, no, no, you asked me what's my, you know, $2 billion was my yes, absolutely number. So that's my yes, absolutely number. But, you know, I'm willing to talk. And then they say like, well, look, you want to meet up? Sure, let's meet up.

And then one guy goes, fine, let's do dinner. And Zuck goes, yeah, the dinner thing was so fucking funny, dude. And Zuck goes, yeah, okay, let's do dinner. Then he replies, you know what? I've already eaten. Like, he was going to cancel the meeting because he had already eaten. He's like, you know, I already ate. And the other guy's like, I was like, yeah, you know, we probably shouldn't go to a restaurant and be like seen, you know, together talking about this and Palo Alto or whatever.

So like your house, yeah, dinner? Yeah, we can order. I don't eat actually. Okay, I'll eat before I come then. It's like, dude. Yeah. Like, did your mom pack your lunch? Why are you talking about it?

Yeah. I was like, dude, just shut up. Just shut up and show up. If you, I just eat fucking again. It's a $2 billion deal. You don't need to be like, okay, do you have gluten-free options at your house or like should I? Yeah, it was so funny.

And then he says, oh, by the way, there's like, you see him texting along the way. He's like, sorry, stuck in traffic in San Mateo. Going to be 15 minutes late. It's quite funny. And it's a good, but it's a good thing to read. Like, it was pretty funny because in your head, you are like, oh, wow, look, these billionaires are just like me.

They're just messaging each other. then you're like... They get stuck in traffic too. Yeah, they get stuck in traffic too. Also, there was a large amount of like nice threats embedded in there. So it would be like, you know, you guys have a great thing going. So first of all, any acquisition, it always starts with like, we should just work together more closely.

Like, yeah, we should discuss like a partnership. And both sides kind of know what that means. You say, you don't really want the partnership, but you can't just say, I want you to buy me or I want to buy you. And so it often starts at that. So they're like, they're talking about it. They're like, yeah, you know, it'd be great. to have you partner more deeply with OpenGraph,

which is like Facebook's kind of news feed protocol. So he's like, you know, it'd be great to do like a deeper integration so that all the Instagram photos show up on Facebook. And then the Instagram founder's like, yeah, but like, you know, kind of don't know if I want all the Instagram photos just to get sucked into Facebook. Like that kind of defeats the purpose of Instagram a little bit. And then Mark's like, no, no, like, look, think about it this way.

And he's like, you could do this. But like, we're also working on our own mobile photo, you know, app with filters. So like, we'll just have to figure that. out. The guy's like, yeah, totally want to figure that out. But really what they're saying is, like, Zuck's basically saying, I'm going to fucking kill you with my app, unless you do this. And the other guy's like,

I don't want you to kill me, but I also don't want to, like, give you the gun and let you shoot me. So they're just like going back and forth in this like pseudo, like, it'd be great to discuss what a tighter integration would be while really the Instagram guy's just like, I really hope Facebook doesn't crush us. And Zucks basically like, we can totally

crush you. You need to sell to us. Meanwhile, Kevin Sist from the Instagram, guys, having a conversation with a former Facebook executive who's now an investor of Instagram. And Kevin goes, Mark's going to destroy a Sizzity. I think it's Matt Kohler. He said something like, yeah, probably. Like, if he sets his eyes on it, he's going to, like, attack. And he's like, what do I say so he doesn't go into destroy mode? That's what it was. Destroy mode. That's what it was. So I love reading this thing. It's on your Twitter if people want to find it. It was really good. It was also good. I don't know.

what Kevin Sistram's background is. I don't know if he came. I mean, if I had a stereotype him, I would imagine he already came from a somewhat comfortable, wealthy family just because he's like a tall, good-looking Stanford kid. Who knows, though? Maybe I have no idea of his background. But the fact is, is that he was working on this business for two years. They had a million in funding at first, and then two or three or 16 million, like a mild amount at first, a substantial amount at second. But if he is, in fact, self-made, he wasn't definitely rich because it's not like that money was going to him. And after a year and a half, Zuck offered him $500 million,

and he had the nerve to say no. So that's pretty amazing. Kevin Sistram, his mom was an executive at Zipcar and also worked at Monster during the dot-com boom. And then his dad was the vice president of human resources at T.J.X, which I think is, I think that's T.J. Max. So definitely, definitely affluent, went to Stanford, and then, like, jobs were basically like, Google,

at Twitter basically and then went off. So, like, at worst, upper middle class, more likely upper class background. So he, for sure, upper class, yeah. He had money. But that doesn't mean anything. Who cares, yeah. Yeah.

You're just saying, how do you react to a $500 million or a billion dollar offer? Well, I think that you're, some people will react to it differently if they're poor, right? Like, if you're entirely self-made, you're like, look, like, I was living paycheck to paycheck recently. I didn't have anything, you know, I really would love the security. That's one thing.

It doesn't matter, though. It's still balzy that he said. note of 500 million. And it's a really cool story. And you could read the memo. And then I found there's this guy, you probably know how to say his name. Is it called Sur Surram? Yeah. Sri Ram is his name S-R-I-A-M, I think. Yeah. So he has a website. It's called S-R-I-R-A-M-M-K.com. You go there and you click memos and he has dozens of these style memos that he's collected and they're really good. So he's got memos from Steve Jobs.

I was explaining to early employees about this and that. He's got memos from the founding of Hulu, the founding of MTV, of, I'm putting, I have a section like this I'm making on my website as well. I was working on it yesterday, which is called the museum. I think about what the last part is, like it's like the museum of badassery or museum of the internet or something like that. Or I'm just putting these like kind of like things I found like, oh, the first pitch deck for this company or the first memo for PowerPoint or whatever. I'm just putting them all there. That's cool. So anyway, I wanted to bring that up.

It was pretty awesome. Not an idea, but pretty awesome. Okay, so I have two ideas, and then I have, I want to talk to you about the tweet I did last week that had a little bit of controversy. So I want to do that. That's what I was going to ask you to bring up. Which one do you want to do first? Let's do tweet so we can get it out the way. Okay.

You want to give the context or should I? I would like you to say what happened. So I don't remember when this was, maybe a few days ago, four days ago, something like that. I went on Twitter and I basically tweeted out a third. thread of just highlighting a bunch of Twitter accounts that are like my favorite Twitter accounts. And so I was basically saying, here's a bunch of Twitter accounts. If you follow these, you'll get smarter. I followed them for years and really enjoyed their thoughts. And I kind of broke it up into groups. I was like, okay, you know, here's a bunch of billionaires that just like,

don't give a fuck. They say interesting things. Here's some people who buy businesses. Here's some real estate people. Here's some people who publish frameworks, et cetera, et cetera. And I published this list. I hit send. I'm just on my phone. This is like after my workout. I just tweeted this thing out. hit send, forget about it, go eat lunch. And then I look at my phone and my phone is blowing up. And I'm like, oh, cool, people liked that thread I did. And it was true. Like, definitely people liked that thread.

But like, I think it had like, I don't know, a few thousand, I had 5,000 likes or something like that. So it definitely did well. But then I saw a whole bunch of people who were really angry in the thread also. I was like, what are people angry about? And basically there's a whole bunch of people who were like, oh, my God, you just published a list of 27 people that are like, you know, must follows. and not one of them was a woman.

And then people just started getting really pissed. They were just like, oh, my God, this is what's wrong with tech. This is what's wrong with the world. This is what's wrong with Sean. This is just what's wrong. You could publish a list of 27 Twitter accounts and not a single one was a woman. And so I wanted to get your reaction when you saw it,

and then I'll tell you kind of like, I don't know, where I'm at now. Let's start with this. Big deal, little deal, no deal. Little deal. Okay. Borderline, no deal. Okay. So, like, I think that it all is about intentions.

Right. Your intentions were not bad at all. You shouldn't. Which nobody would know, right? Nobody knows anyone's intentions. I know, you know, because you know me, but. Yes, your intentions were wonderful. Your intentions were actually the opposite of bad.

They were good. You were trying to help people. Right. Now, I do, like, want to promote diversity in different backgrounds and different ways of thinking and things like that. But you are just saying who your favorite bands are. or who your favorite authors are. In the same way that behind me, the readers, listeners can't see this,

I have eight people on my wall who inspire me. Most of them are like athletes or like boxers and like a rapper. Right. And all men? All men. Actually, all, I think almost all black men. And so I think that when it comes to naming your heroes or your taste, I don't, I think that it's unfair to say that you should have or shouldn't have a

certain type of person. Right. So that's what I thought, too. So I'll tell you what I went through. So first was, I was like, oh, this is interesting. Like first, A, I didn't realize like the, you know, I didn't even think about it. It's not like when I was writing it. I was like, let's make sure this list is diverse. That's not a thing I think about personally. Some people will say, that's the problem. You do need to be thinking about that. I personally disagree. I don't want to be thinking about when I'm thinking about my favorite things or things that I think are really great, I don't want to be thinking about things that are really great that hit a certain quota of diversity. That's not like personally what I want to do.

And I'm okay with people thinking that that's fucked up. What I'm not okay with them thinking is that that's fucked up. And the only answer is that it's fucked up. I think we could disagree on that if people think that I should be thinking about diversity with that. But there is one big caveat here. And I think, and this sounds so lame for me to say, I think you and I have just crossed the threshold of regular person to having a little bit of influence. Not that we're certainly not even close to famous, but we do have some type of

audience and some crazy enough people look to us for some type of feedback and advice. And I agree with not having quotas. I agree with all that. And for a long time, my opinion has slightly changed. Like, well, if I have a voice, I should, like, I should get what interests me. And I don't think being a bro brand is bad. Like, being a bro brand is not bad. Being a chick brand or whatever, the opposite of a bro brand is not bad either, right? Like, there's like, Cosmo Palatin magazine, and then there's Maxim magazine, whatever. Both are great and server purpose. I don't want to be a male brand. I want to be an anyone who's doing cool stuff brand. And so I do think it is up to us to have different types of people, promote different

types of people. But when you're listing out your preferences, I think that's nonsense. Yeah. So I basically tried to respond because at first I was like, oh, who cares? Some people are upset. It's the internet. Nobody cares. Then I was like, this was probably the first time that I, it's not like I'm out there trying to be controversial all the time to get a bunch of attention. So I was accidentally controversial in this case. So I started getting a whole bunch of mentions, people DMing me, emailing me. And I was just like, what is all this? And so I was kind of like fucking up my day.

So I'm trying to go about my day. It was like right before New Year's or whatever, spend a family time. And I couldn't help but check. I wanted to see what was going. It was like a fight. I couldn't stop like turning my neck. I wanted to see, oh, someone saying some shit about me. Then these other people are coming and defending me.

And I wanted to see the fight. And I couldn't look away. And the thing that was bothering me was, fuck, I feel like my mind should be stronger than this impulse to just keep fucking checking this thing. And so I just felt so weak because I was like, oh, I'm just like all these other people who just care what everybody else thinks about them. And so that really bothered me. I couldn't look away. But it was my first thing. I was like, okay, I think I will get hardened to this.

But man, I'm not there. I would have thought I'm there already. I'm not there yet. The second thing was I was like, all right, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I screw up, I'll just be like, okay, I screwed up. I should have done this. And I was like, well, I think it's fair for people to be upset about it. I also think it's fair for me to not feel the need to hit diversity quotas when I'm listing my favorite stuff.

I gave the same analogy. I was basically like, if I say my favorite authors or musicians or athletes or whatever, I should not have to be like, oh, my favorite basketball players. Here's five from the NBA, five from the WMBA, five from the Chinese basketball league. Like, that's crazy to me. And I even tweeted this out. I was like, you know, all my favorite basketball players are black men. Don't cancel me.

Because, you know, I just felt like someone's taste, their personal taste, should not have to do that. Now, I think other people totally think, other people would totally disagree. And so I wanted to get a sense check of like, am I just being hardheaded about nothing? What, Bray, I'm curious what you thought about this too. Let me say one thing real quick, which is, no, I don't think you're being, I don't think you're wrong. But we do have to be, we do have to recognize that there is some bit of influence that we've created. and having different voices is important. And I'm not necessarily saying by gender or by color.

I'm just saying like having open minds is actually important. And I do actually think we owe to a lot of people. And we could serve as a good example. But Ray, go ahead. No, that's basically what I was going to say, Sam. Like, yeah, I think it is important to kind of be inclusive. But at the same time, it's like, I read that list. I didn't like think twice that they were all men.

I mean, maybe that's part of my ignorance, but you should like who you like. So then I'll tell you the, Okay, evil Sean. So evil Sean is reading these comments. It's not evil, Sean. It's someone's being mean to be. I want to fight back. Yeah, exactly.

So I was like, oh, excellent, time to clap back. And luckily, Ben was basically, Ben has access to my Twitter as well. And so he was like, he's like, don't fight back. Like, hey, you're not going to change anyone's mind about anything. So you know that. First of all, you're too smart to think that you're going to change these people's mind in the same way that they're not probably going to change your mind about what you believe. And, you know, the second thing is you have a lot more to lose than you have to gain in like just coming back at people and like calling them out.

So, for example, somebody was like, here's a better list. And then they listed a list full of women. And then like there was no, there was no black person on the list. It was like, dude, what a hypocrite. Like you are trying to come in here and be a white knight and be like, oh, here's a real list. And then you all they include white people. And so I thought that was funny But I had to restrain myself from

Like commenting on it Because I was like, I agree There is no there's nothing to benefit I do have more to lose Than I have to gain through any of this stuff And it made me really just be like You know what? Kind of like fuck social media

And fuck the like fear people have Like so I would say I thought it was stupid Or like not stupid But like it's kind of like Oh what a shame Like I can't say back What I really think

Because you know In trouble I might get canceled basically And I was like, what does that do in the end? All it does is make people fake being a certain way and then really think what they think on the inside and like in private channels share that stuff, but not in the public forum.

And so the whole cancel culture thing, I don't think it actually helps because people get afraid of being canceled so they just hide their thoughts from the public forum and they just keep it in private and they hold resentment. That's how I felt. And so, I don't know, that was kind of my reaction to the whole thing. It's a tough situation. I had something not nearly as controversial happened,

but this weekend I, And one of my biggest pet peeves is people who collect domain names and never start anything. I saw this, yeah. So you tweeted out something like, don't collect domain. Don't go buy your domain. Like, go get customers. So it's kind of like your point. Yeah.

Don't sit there and try to get the right domain. And the point was like, look, if you know you're going to execute and you know you're going to do something and you have a history of executing, yeah, go beat your domain name, make a pretty site, do this, do that. But a lot of people are in the habit of collecting. And what you meant was like going and paying to get a certain name. Is that what you meant? Or it's like obviously going to Go Daddy for five seconds and just hitting by for a $9 domain. Like, no harm done. It wasn't actually about getting a domain.

It was about getting the right domain. It was 100% about not getting like, who cares if you don't get the right domain name? And also like who cares if you don't even have a domain name? Just use like gum road. Use WordPress. You could use these free ones. Get like a little bit of traction. Talk to some customers.

And then like go make that domain name. And in fact, domain names aren't even that important early on. I mean, you can like go and get customers without a website. But just get a little bit of traction to the shows that you're actually going to follow through versus all the other people who go and get an LLC, get business cards, get a logo, get a domain name before they even have started.

And they end up doing that literally 50 times and run in here. I call that playing business. It's like when you're a little kid and it's like, oh, let's play house. It's like, oh, welcome, you know, just a fake tea party. It's playing business when you do everything except for the key part, which is get customers and make a product and get it to customers. It's like, I got my domain. I got my business cards.

I got my swag. It's like you're just playing house. Right. I had hundreds of people in the domain industry tweet at me being so angry. One domain blog, like Domainking.com, wrote an article about it. And they're like, if you want to see some of the most nonsense advice of the day, check out Sam Pars' advice to people. It was crazy how angry these people got.

And I did the same thing where I was trying not to be a smart ass and reply, but it slipped a little. What's ironic is I tweeted out, hey, here's the. people I follow on Twitter that make me want to open the Twitter app and like check it 10 times a day because there's a bunch of smart people saying interesting things. That was like the intent of my tweet. Ironically, then every moment I opened Twitter, I saw the exact opposite. I saw the thing I hate about Twitter, which is the mass easily offended crew just running around trying to like police the fucking internet. This is the opposite. These are the people to me not to follow compared to these

people I said say interesting things. The least interesting thing you could do is going around trying to police the internet. Is your wife on Twitter? No. Sarah's trying, is getting into Twitter now, and she's trying to get a little bit of a following and figure out who to follow. And she was like, there are no women on here.

It is all dudes. I mean, we're in like the tech scene. So she was like, it's all tech guys. There's no tech women. And so if you're a woman listening to this, I definitely think there's opportunity there. She's totally right. It is all a bunch of dudes.

It's pretty crazy. I mean, I don't know if it's all. It's definitely not all of Twitter. I think it's just our little, I have no idea, though, of our little tech world, what percentage of that is of Twitter? Obviously, it feels like it's like 80 or 90% to you and me. I have no idea what the reality is.

Maybe it's mainstream, but it is a lot of dudes. There's definitely a lot more dudes that are prominent on Twitter. And so the other thing that's actually like, it's funny. It's not funny, but it's funny at the same time. In my kind of like, my follow-up, I won't call it an apology because I didn't apologize. But I was basically saying, like, hey, here's how I think about it. like, oh, interesting.

Here's the reaction. Okay, here's my thoughts. And like, here's my honest thoughts. So I was like, look, there are a bunch of, you know, like people who are female on Twitter that, like, I like to follow that I think of really interesting to say interesting stuff. And I mentioned a few of them, Steph Smith, who works at The Hustle. And I mentioned this girl who's at Julie 4 and this person, this one, at post underscore

market. I just casually mentioned a few. I was like, yeah, there's a bunch of interesting people. I just, I don't know, like when I was tweeting, it didn't come to mind as that. And also, I mostly shouted out people that I've, been following for years. I've been on Twitter for like eight years. And so some of these people are like, you know, they don't know me, but they're like a mentor, right? Because I've been following your, if I've been following your thoughts for seven years, you feel like you know, you know,

you've really genuinely helped me. And that's why I'm just giving some kudos back and saying, hey, you might help some other people if they follow. I wasn't saying here's the best people on Twitter to follow. Like, here are, here is the definitive list of 30 like, you know, top people. I was just saying who I liked, who had helped me. And so then ironically, somebody was like, by the way, you know, postmarket is not a woman. I was like, what? Like, the picture's a woman. It's like, yeah, it's like a pseudonymous account.

I was like, oh, okay, good thing that, you know, like, didn't know that either. Whatever. It's all about- I'm not judging it. I don't think about it that way. Like, I don't think about it in men and women and, like, how many Muslims did I tweet out and how many, like, Christian people did I tweet? I don't think about it that way.

This is not how my brain works. It's just who's interesting consistently. It's all about intentions. And now you have 44,000 people. I feel like just last week it was like 20,000. Yeah, dude, I added 20,000 followers this month, which is crazy. And in fact, this tweet storm is insane. So multiple people on this, six or seven people who I tweeted out,

they were like, what the fuck is going on? So I had people who had 300 followers before this that now have 10,000. What? So the average person that I tweeted out on this added eight or nine thousand followers just from this thread in the following 24 hours. How? Oh, my God. I added, I got 4,000 new followers.

followers. I got 4,000 new followers. The average person from this got 8,000 or 9,000. What was the reach? How many people did it reach? I don't know. And I also don't like believe any of these reach numbers that Twitter. Twitter will be like, oh, half a million people saw this. It's like, well, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? It's not that hard to understand what that means. It's just like, okay, that's a huge number. Like, what? So what? Like, is that, does it matter? Like, this says 900,000 impressions. Yeah, that I believe that. What do you mean? What do you don't, what does you understand? It's just a list of people. It's just a list of people who, you're just scrolling on the timeline. Who cares.

You know what I mean? Like, so total engagements, 622,000 engagements. 591 detail expands. 591,000 detail expands. Over 6,000 people clicked into the tweet, I guess, which is pretty crazy. Yeah, do more of that. Yeah, it's insane. Like, you know, Nikita Beer, he's one of the people I put in like the memes category because

he just tweets out funny stuff all the time. He was like, dude, you need to start an agency. He's like, I started this morning at like 16,000 followers. I have 25,000 followers like in one day. What? Yeah, well, good job. Sean, like, tagged me there. All he said was, like, O'Brien, check this out or something.

I gained, like, $20 from that. I am officially an influencer now, and I officially need to have diversity because of my power comes to great responsibility is what I'm hearing. Abrae, is this good, are the listeners going to like this nonsense or not? Who knows, but I like it. I like to find, like, a new group every week. We got big domain.

We got Twitter. Oh, yeah, that was my other point. point, which is like, hey, controversy definitely works. It wasn't my intention, but shit, that shit worked. This thing blew up. Did you see the hilarious email from The King at the end? Can I read this? Oh, my gosh.

I'm not only even want to laugh at that person. I feel bad. They're clearly insane. Someone DMs me, and they're basically just like, bro, no women? I was like, oh, yeah, like, sorry. You know, it was just tweeting out a list of accounts I liked. I didn't ever think about it, but that's it. They were like, and then they started going one by one through the people on the list,

and they were like, Keith's not even interesting. His tweets, I just went back through his timeline. It's not even interesting. So I think less of you now because of that. I was like, okay. And plus his dad was rich. So he basically got it all handed to him. I was like,

it's not relevant nor is that like true really. So okay. And he's like just kept going, just tweeting about me, just DMing me about each person on the list. I was like, dude, I go, dude, if you don't like the list, just ignore it.

No need to waste my time critiquing everything on the list. He goes, then block me. I'm just challenging you to think of the other side. If I'm wasting your time, why do you keep engaging? I was like, dude, I was trying to be polite and not block you because you've DM me before. But like, all right, fine, see you. And then he emails this.

I block him. And then he emails me, biggest mistake ever, subject line. And then you just fucked up blocking me right now. Say goodbye to owning 5 to 10% of a deck of corn, which is, I guess what his company is going to be, a $10 billion company. He goes, I'm going to continue to email you update so you know you made the biggest mistake your life. Imagine being the investor who blocked a future king. That's what you did. He just went on and on.

And I was like, what is going on? And I got a bunch of these, like, kind of like, I got a handful of these messages. That's just insane. And then he ends up, by the way, with best regards. And then, you know, he followed up a day later. It was like, I was out of line. I shouldn't have done that.

You don't have to unblock me, but just, you know, whatever. I was like, dude, just stop contacting me. Like, I'm not interested in any of this, aside from the humor of the thing you emailed me about being the future king. You called yourself the future king. You're going to get made fun of now. You are not off limits because you called yourself the future king. We'll have to have them on the podcast.

Well, if you're listening, send Sean an update in a few months. Maybe we should cover one idea. All right. I have two. Can I just do them real quick? All right. So Cameo is an interesting company we've talked about. And Cameo's premise is basically like, you know, the insight that the guy had,

I forgot his name. I kind of know the guy. He came on the podcast. But Stephen, I think is his name. Stephen Glanis. The came on here? Yeah, he was on the pod like at the beginning when I was doing an interview. reviews. Oh. And he went to Duke and stuff like that when I was there too.

I heard that's a billion dollar company, by the way. Yeah, I think it is valued around there. With only like 50 engineers. So he told me on the thing, he goes, well, what I realized was that now when people see a celebrity, they go up to them, they don't ask for an autograph, they ask for a selfie. And you go, selfie is the new autograph. So that was kind of like one of the core insights of, well, what if you could just pay somebody to send you a little selfie video, a personalized shoutout? That's like worth, you know, that's like a super autograph. basically. That's what cameo is. So cameo takes off, came a successful, blah, blah, blah, you know. And you try to do a cameo where you got Sean Paul to speak at your mastermind group.

Yeah. So I do this e-commerce meetup for anybody who's going from $100,000 a month to a million dollars a month. You're scaling up. It's called Club LTV. And I made it like a club. And I got Sean Paul to do the, he's like, I told him, I go, because he starts everything off where he's like, I don't even know what he says. It's like this sort of Mr. Sule your girl intro where he's just like, shot up, Paul, coming to you live from club LTV. He's like, you know, where you only go up with it. He's just like doing his like thing. So I got him to make a cameo.

I love cameo. Anyways, one of the other things people like to do with celebrities that I noticed is meet and greet's. So at TwitchCon, TwitchCon is like the annual conference for Twitch. The star streamers, kind of like the big famous streamers, they're all there in person at this event. And they each have like a meet and greet session that will go for like, let's say, an hour.

So it'll be like a bunch of tables. and there's just lines and lines of tables set up. And the streamer sitting at the table. And then there's people waiting like three hours in line just to go up and be like, hi. And the guy's like, hey. And they like kind of like, you know, shake hands or they give a high five. And then they like take a photo together.

And then they're like, oh, my God, I'm your biggest fan. And they're like, oh, thanks so much. Like, oh, I love the way you do this. It's like, thank you. All right, next. And like the next person goes up. And so I remember seeing that at TwitchCon and being like, this is wild.

These people have hours and hours of lines all day. They could just literally see it all day and like each person gets their one minute and they love it. They're like, it's worth standing in line for two hours to get that one minute with your favorite person. So I thought, could you do this digitally? Now, I don't think this is a great business, but I do think this is kind of a viral product. Like our friend Greg Eisenberg, who has that little studio late checkout, I think he should do this as a fun, simple viral product like he did with the, you need a haircut. dot com or whatever it was, where it was like, you know, a virtual haircut over Zoom during quarantine. So the idea is you create an event.

Like let's say you get 15 TikTokers to say, hey, we're doing a virtual meet and greet on this day. Tickets are $10. And then what happens is on the day, the website goes live. You just see everyone's face. You just click to get in line for the person you want to meet. And all it is is like a Zoom room. That's just two squares.

One is the celebrity and the other one's you. And you're just in line. And then you get one minute and you're on camera with them. and you have your minute, you can say whatever the hell you want, they can talk to you. It takes like a screenshot selfie of you guys, so you have kind of the memory that you can go share somewhere. And then when the minute ends, it moves,

and the next person in the line comes on. And the celebrity would, like, if the celebrity was selling these for $10 or $15 or whatever it is, the tickets for the meet and greet, let's just say it was per person in this case. They could do in one hour, you know, they might do... Well, if it's only a minute, 60, but let's just round down and say 45.

Yeah, let's say they're doing 45 in an hour, and they're basically making $500 to $1,000 an hour, I think, depending on what you price it at, which is like not bad for, you know, what I'll call like your Instagram famous, but you're not real world famous, which is kind of where Cameo Sweet Spot is too. They have mostly like people who used to be famous, like reality TV stars. Kevin from the office. Kevin from the office who made a million dollars this year doing cameos. And so for Kevin from the office, if he was able to make like $800 an hour, $900 an hour,

and all he has to do is just sit there and just fans come up and say hi. you know, this is a thing that people do, like authors do this when they go on book tours. This is a thing that hasn't really translated into digital yet. And so I just think it would be a funny, simple idea. And I think everybody would share their moment with their celebrity on their Instagram and their snap. And so I think you'd get a ton of viral growth just through people sharing their kind of like their selfie with a celebrity on their own social media. This is kind of like a startup broie thing for me to say. But like it is fascinating how you and the cameo guy, like you're this framework here.

of just like looking at things that you forget don't have to happen that way. And you're like, well, what if I just do this on my phone? I mean, that sounds like there's like this meme of this like guy who's high who's like, what's that meme? You know, the guy who's high like, oh my God. Like if you're wet or if you're a fish, the wet means you're in the air. Right. Like, you know, the guy who's high and has these like.

Yeah, that's what these ideas are? It's like, what if it was that was like digital? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I'm like, I's not like a pothead. Like, can God eat a burrito so hot? even he can't eat it. Right.

So, like, I feel like that right now. I do think there's just a lot of room to grow with, like, basically giving people, if you make it lightweight enough, like, for example, let's say, let's take even the autograph use case. Could you basically just submit a photo and then, like, the person literally just signs it with their finger on their phone? Like, send it back to you for, like, $20? Yeah, that'll be your cell phone wallpaper, which is like, you know, like,

Mr. Studio, girl, have fun, Sean, Paul. I don't even know these people are. I just feel like there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of room in the business model of acknowledge me, Senpai. Like, I just say, like, people want their kind of, like, famous people. It's a great gift. And it's great for any superfan to be able to, like, reach these people. And if you could do it with less friction faster and just for a small payment through your phone,

I just think that there's more. I don't think Cambio is the end. I think there's more. I dig it. I'm into it. I don't know if this would work, but I think it's a really easy and cool thing to try. So if you're looking for an idea and a sexy, space, which I don't particularly want to work in a sexy space, but if you are, this seems like

an interesting thing to give it a shot. The big problem here is, of course, just like begging celebrities to do something. I hate that. It's like the worst. I've done it so many times. Like, oh, if I just get influencers to use my thing, it just sucks to try to get influencers to do anything. Why?

It's just like, basically, it's so hard to get to them. And when you get to them, they're like so fickle with their attention. They're just on their phone. And you're like, hey, well, you just fucking listen for like a. second, I'm giving you the easiest way to make more money. And they're just like, yeah, but like, whatever. And like, then they do it. And then they like, don't follow through. It's just, it's in a, you're in a very weak position whenever you're trying to get celebrities to like use your thing. That's kind of the core thing. All right, I want to do a quick idea or a quick

kind of cool company that I think is, there's probably more companies like this. So I saw this tool called ucalk.pro. So it's the letter ucalk.com. And all this website does, all this app does, is it lets you embed a calculator on your website. So calculators are kind of like amazing little things for SEO. So like your boys that nerd wallet use a bunch of calculators like, oh, what's my mortgage payment if I buy this house? Can I afford this house? Or like, you know, how much will I make if I put this much into my retirement account for 20 years?

It's like a compound interest calculator. It's a clean little website. Clean website. And all this does is just makes it really easy to be like, yo, what is the calculator you want? And so you don't have to have a developer do this. I love this simple idea. I want to buy this company because I think it's a great little tool,

probably makes awesome cash flow, super high margin. People just embedded on their website. They probably don't take it off and they keep paying you the monthly fee of $9 or whatever it is. And so I think it's a great tool if you want to add a calculator to your website, which I do. And so I want to share it for others who want to add calculators to their website as a way to engage your users in a way to get SEO traffic. And then the other thing is I just think it's a great example of a simple, useful business

that is awesome as a bootstrapped little company. It started by a... It's like a Russian guy. I can't find the guy. He's like nowhere to be found on the internet. I just looked him up. Oh, that's cool. So if you're listening to this UCalc guy, I want to buy UCalc from you. There's people talking about them on Hacker News.

Interesting? Recently or old? One year ago. Yeah. Pretty cool. Isn't it like a nifty little thing? Yeah. Imagine owning about a hundred of them. Yeah. And so that's what I would try to do.

It's trying to like, I'd get one. And it's like, cool. This thing is profitable, just cashals every month. This is a class of idea of like simple widgets that you add to websites or simple widgets for websites that, you know, you don't want to have to pay a developer to build something custom for you. You should just be able to customize this out of the box. Survey tools are like this. Check this out. There's this guy named Saeed. How do you spell his last name? Sayid Ba-A-L-K-H-I. Saeed-Balk-H-I. Sorry, Saeed. Anyway, he has a business. So he has a business. So he has a business. So he has a business. So he has. originally started WP Beginner.com, which is a blog all on WordPress. And it gets like five or 10 million uniques a month. Like it gets a lot because a lot of people are searching for WordPress stuff and he like teaches you how to do everything. Free site, whatever, probably

makes 10 million plus a year. He saw which of his plugins were getting the most article views. And then he was like, well, I'm just going to go and buy a plugin like that and promote it here. And so he owns this thing called Optin Monster, which is basically like really cool pop-ups. He owns WP beginner. He owns Monster Insights, which is like Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. And then he owns WP forms, which I have a feeling, I think, is the largest one, which is just a form builder for WordPress. He owns WP Mail SMTP.

That's something technical. I don't know what it means. Then he owns, it looks like, wow, Raffle Plus, which is a, oh my gosh. I look like he owns. I love this model. So basically super popular blog, looks at which tools people want, goes and buys the tool because he knows I can funnel a fuck down of traffic to this and then owns those tools in each of the categories of like,

a lot of WordPress sites need a form. A lot of WordPress sites want to capture emails, so they need Opt-in Monster. How much do you think this guy's making? This guy's got to be really profitable. I heard from a few people, I have no idea if this is true. So it looks like he owns maybe eight.

He probably owns outright eight plugins. And then I heard that he owns like a 40 or 30% stake in like 50 more. I heard it's in the $30 to $40 million recurring revenue, range, which is pretty cool and it's probably very profitable. On his personal blog, like Saeed and then his last name.com, he talks about buying property. So he owns a bunch of gas stations, which is funny. I think this guy's, I think he's Pakistani. Our Pakistani friends, Sean, also buy our Pakistani internet friends also buy a ton of gas stations. This guy is just like ultimate little brown guy. This is a great brown guy businessman. I'm proud of him. He's done a fantastic

And he talks about buying gas stations. And then he talked about buying a bank, like literally the building. He bought like a Chase building and then leased it to Bank of America or something like that. And he was like, I don't like debt. So I just bought it in cash. So the best way, I think one of the easiest ways to look at how much money someone has is by looking at how big their home is or how big their real estate holdings are. And so it makes enough money to have like dozens of properties that he pays for in cash. Amazing.

Okay, shout out to this guy, Saeed. I like him. We should have him on. I know that he's quite cagey, though. I don't know him personally. I've only shook his hand and said what's up a couple times. We have a bunch of mutual friends. One of our good buddies bought a business from him.

Pretty interesting guy. We'll have to have this guy on. I think he's pretty cagey, but maybe we can get something out of him. I like it. Did you have any ideas or anything you wanted to do? None that I wanted to discuss now because I don't like going too much over time. I like keeping them short. Okay, cool.

Yeah. All right. I gotta go.