My First Million - #143 with Jeremy Cai of Italic - Influencer Coffee Making Millions, What Cold Chain Is and Why It's Booming, And Tons of Ideas

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) discuss: - Is Sam Parr Time Person of the Year? - Jeremy introduces himself - Idea: subscription box for bread (and the millions in subscription boxes) - The big business of selling to middle America (aspirational branding) - Boring DTC products that crush it - Ideas for niche software (ex: trust fund SaaS) - Huge homeschooling opportunities - Millions to be made creating products for influencers - How one guy took a local brand national - Why cold chain storage is booming 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.

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 on. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. Good. Yeah, I'm recording on my side. Let's do it. Jeremy, do you know, Sean?

Yeah, funny story. Sean was one of my role models back in college. What? Look at me now. Wait, why? So I went to college in the small school called Babson in Boston. And most of the people eventually end up in finance. But the main stick of the college is like it's supposed to be number one for entrepreneurship.

A lot of kids were like really into that. And around Boston, we like organized a trip to San Francisco, visited a bunch of tech companies. It was back in like winter 2013 or 2014. scene and Monkey Inferno and Bevo. Like, you know, Sean was this like really impressive guy who we visited and the office was spectacular. It's mostly just the office. Also, Sean, but like, I think we've mentioned that office a little bit, but this is

how I actually met Sean as well. And I let's, I don't care of, Sean shouldn't describe this because it was kind of his. But he had this office, Jeremy, that was, it was called Monkey. Inferno, it could have housed or, you know, probably 50 people could have worked there if they wanted to. Oh, I think more. Maybe more. It was really impressive. If I, like, they had an espresso machine. They had, I think, a cook that would come every day, like a professional kitchen. It had tables that looked, it had a table that was maybe 15 feet wide. And it looked as if you cut down a Yosemite tree and turned it into a table. Like, it looked like a $200,000 table.

The worst part was I thought that was every startup. So I was like, oh, man, these guys are living the dream, like working in this dope office. And then reality hits when you actually move here. It's like, oh, that is like one of a million. Sean, do you think that that place costs more than $2 million to decorate? No, that's a little bit much. But we got lucky because my main investor and the guy who actually started the lab, he owned the building. So he was the landlord.

It's not like we were paying some crazy rent to some landlord. So he had bought this building in 2008, 2009, right after the real estate crash. So he scooped it up for super cheap. I don't know, like a couple million bucks, I think. He got this building that was at the time seven different like lofts, like apartment lofts. And he just smashed down the walls and combined them into a giant live workspace. And he left one loft. So there's actually an apartment at the top.

So it's three stories of office. office floors, but we only used the top floor for desks. The second floor, we turned into like ping pong, like the classic, you know, stereotypical stupid startup blowing money thing. It's like ping pong table, snack room. We turned it, we created a weight room in there like to exercise in. The third floor was wherever his desk. And the fourth floor was just, uh, this loft, this apartment where you could just crash in

if you stayed late. And so my first year there, I slept in that apartment 200 days out of the 365 of the year. It was basically my house. Jeremy, yeah, I mean, like this office is made. It also had like a Mac one computer, like the first Mac. Right. I remember I picked up a coaster once. So the story is, so Michael and Zocchi Burch owned the building.

They started the lab. They had had a ton of success. So they wanted to work in like their dream environment. So they built their dream environment, which most entrepreneurs can't afford to do. They owned the building. They did the renovation. They had this one designer, this guy Ken Folk, who is like this like, this kind of designer to the stars type of guy.

And he's like wild. Like you have art behind you, Sam. This guy would come in every two months and just rotate the art. So we would come into the office one day and like all the art had changed. But you wouldn't notice because they're the same position, but it's just a different picture in there. And he was just like an elf that would like turn over the office with new shit all the time. And I was like, are we paying for this?

What's going on? And I remember picking up a coaster and it said $700 on a sticker under the coaster is still on there. Do you think it was $700 for one coast? I think it was probably the rack, the stack of six or whatever, but I was like $700. And, you know, that was crazy to me. Like, it had mirrors that were one-way mirrors. So you would go to the restroom. And when you would look out the window, they said the mirror, the wall of the restroom,

it looked like everybody could see you peeing. But it was actually a one-way mirror. And when they looked at you, they just saw a mirror. They couldn't see you peeing. So we got, I want to, we have to ask Jeremy who he is and what he does. But before we get there, I do want to say one thing to you, Sean. Yesterday, I foster, I began fostering a dog. And I just want to make the announcement that if Time Magazine decides to honor me with person of the year because I'm doing this, you accept.

I'll accept. So if anyone needs a dog, follow me on Twitter. I got to find this dog a whole. Is this a stray? Like you just took it in? No, I, like, signed up. I'm just being a saint. That, you know, whatever.

I'm just, I'm an angel. So I just want everyone to know that. What are you covering up for? What did you do that made you want to go out and do a good deed? I'm just a saint. So follow me on Twitter and someone to come adopt this dog. Jeremy, who are you? Yeah, I am the founder and CEO of a company called Italic

and also a co-founder with my girlfriend of a company called Not Pot, both of which are companies in e-com. So happy to dive into you. and share more. And that's not pot. dot com, not pot like weed. It is,

it is literally not pot. It is a, it's a, it's a American, I usually say it's an American wellness brand, but yes, it's a CBD brand. It's been around for,

no, but I just mean, how do you spell it? POT, right? No, TOT. So not pot. Great name, by the way. Was that the first name

that came to you or, I mean, I can't take credit for any of the creative. That's all, that's all Katie. She's the genius there. But yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my day to day.

And then Italic, we've talked about before. Amazing company. I believe, I don't know if we've signed the papers yet. I believe I'm an investor officially in the company at some point. I think it's an amazing concept. You guys basically, and tell me if I get this wrong, I might butcher it. You guys basically have high-end kind of premium goods. So it could be bags, jackets, scarves, a whole bunch of different skews that are the same manufacturers that do, you know, production for Gucci and Prada and like all the big brands.

and basically you offer those same quality products without the brand name label and therefore almost like at factory pricing. So you become an italic member. As a member, you get access to this like sort of factory pricing of premium goods. If you want quality but you don't want to, you don't want to overpay 10x for the label essentially. Yep, that's exactly right. So yeah, and to anyone who we've, okay, for what it's worth, we've never done this before. So this is the first time we're ever doing it. Like for anyone who wants to try it out, I did make a code.

It's MFM pod, I think. And you get a free year, which is normally $120 for a membership. I actually don't even know like how big this podcast is. So I hope I didn't just shoot myself. I just break your business. MFP pod. MFM pod. Yeah.

So it's italic.com slash MFM pod. Jeremy, I'm a customer of yours. I'm a paying member. I wish I would have been able to use this. I own your knives and a coat. Oh, thank you. Well, thanks. Thanks for supporting us.

I, you know, will promise to keep supporting you there. But, yeah, I mean, the idea is basically, you know, I think when most people start brands or companies in e-com, like, you normally start, you could be, if you're a venture type of founder, you're like, okay, you're two MBAs and you're like, okay, I'm going to sell XYZ online because it's a big market. Or you're like a lifestyle brand. You want to kind of bootstrap this up. But I think for Italic, really the goal is to kind of build the suite of tools and technology to empower manufacturers to become merchants of their own. And Italic obviously does well by kind of building the pipes and the rails to kind of provide access to a global market. But to a customer, it's like a killer value prop, right? You're getting high quality products from the same factories as these really premium legacy heritage brands.

And it's well designed. You know, it's, you know, that they're quality goods, but we're offering them at prices that are like 60, 70, 80 percent, you know, lower than what brands do. And then we monetize through, you know, to your point, the membership. So it's like the Costco model. Exactly, right. And how big is the business? It's pretty, I mean, we started about two years ago and we just launched the membership. So we just crossed like the 10,000 member mark.

And things are pretty good. Like most members, you know, I think in ECOM also nowadays, you typically see like one of two things if you want to, hopefully make it. And it's like you either have to be profitable on first purchase or, you know, hopefully you have enough replenishment or frequency of use to come back. And really the goal with Italic. And also, I think most of the times, like, you had, there was this narrative of like, hey, we're going to start in this one category, like raise a whole bunch of money to capture it. And then hopefully, like, raise more money to enter into new verticals. And that like almost never works. So it was important for us to also start like pretty horizontal from day one.

So we didn't get pigeonholed into like one category of use. So yeah, people are spending quite a bit. It's typically right now we're about one order a month per member. And members are getting to like $6, $700 of spend in the first six months. So it's been it's been good. Yeah. It's been a good start. Dude, I know I know successful econ brands that are, have half those economics.

So I think that's a very solid place to be. Yeah. I mean, the other thing I, I will say though, for what it's worth, and I don't know if this is a good thing to share or not, but I do think most venture-backed econ businesses play themselves up to be bigger businesses than the actual business like is. There's many more bootstrap. There's like, you know, for every Italic out there, there's like a thousand plus, you know,

bootstrapped econ brands that are doing like multiples of what we're doing. I want to ask you about that. That's what I want to ask you, which is like to name names. But I just had a quick question, which is, how old are you? I'm 25. Wow. Yeah, prepare to feel bad, Sam. I don't know.

I've been... No, you look young and you, I mean, you speak maturely, but you definitely look young. It's very impressive. So, Jeremy, we brought you in and I believe a break you gave you the context of the pod. I don't know if you were listening to the pod, but the context of the pod is we basically shoot the shit and brainstorm, you know, business ideas. as well as just cool stuff we're seeing or businesses that most people haven't heard about that we can kind of break down and walk through like why that business is really interesting. And so I don't know, Dato Bray, you give you that context or are you surprised to hear me say that?

I have a whole list of ideas to go through with you. I had to clear them with Katie who wants to do like Katie's who's my girlfriend before. So a couple of these I'm like, all right, you can't say that because I want to do that. But I have a big look. You know, are you actually afraid of that? because I feel like, you know, Sean and I have had a handful of people execute in our ideas. We had one guy create a newsletter that we had really kind of went deep on and he sold it for maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, we're within a few months. Yeah. We've done it a few times. But in general, I would say the ratio of ideas to execution is quite low. No, I mean, I totally, I agree with you there for sure. In fact, I think, I think Trung had mentioned Italic, like, as a feature, which I'm super appreciative of in a trends, I think a newsletter a while ago, or I think it was a hustle newsletter. And then in there at the bottom, I think, yes, like, okay, put two ideas.

And, like, I got, I got, I counted. I had at least 40 people reach out about one of them. And I didn't expect, that, like, never happened. So I do think people do execute. I think the percentage, to your point, is, like, very low. But also, I think, you know, in college, like, or at least the older you get in tech, at least, I feel like the more you do value good ideas. I think in the beginning, it's like ideas are dime a dozen. All that matters is execution, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know. I do think, like, hey, you could be setting down a path for five, ten years of your life.

And, you know, if it's not a good idea, you kind of just wasted it. You didn't waste it. You learned a lot. But, like, you know, it could have been better if you did spend a little bit more time on the idea side. So I do think ideas are valuable. So let's pop in one idea. So let's take one idea off your list and let's see what we're working with. Give me like a B plus idea.

Don't give me an A idea yet. I'm not ready for the A. Warm me up with a B to B plus. All right. Okay. So I'm going to pull up my list right now. Okay. I've got so.

Oh, by the way, before I got in, like I think the one thing I was curious about to hear is like, is most of your audience kind of interested in like building venture back businesses? Like we talk about it. You know, we talk about everything. We have a lot of people, like the venture back guys, they'll hear a story of a YouTuber making $3 million a year. And they're like, that is awesome. They're like, whoa, I got to start a YouTube channel. And then the bootstrap guys who have a business that makes $800 grand and they pay themselves $100,000, $100,000. They love it because Sean and I will talk about someone who did the X, Y, and Z.

Now it's at like $100 million a year. You know why they love it? Because we'll be like, yeah, this business, they just got valued at $150 million. They're doing $7 million. in revenue and then there's some guy with like an elevator, you know, repair business who's like, we do 14 million. Does that mean we're valued at $300 million? And it's like, they're like part angry, part curious about like what the fuck's going on with these venture back companies. So there's definitely interest on both sides.

You see the transition once in a while, though, I think, you know, between the two, you know, with like, anyways, I'll get. So one of the ideas I jotted down like at the start of COVID when people started staying home a lot was this idea for a subscription box. And I think, you know, subscription boxes, I think nowadays have like a bad rep, you know, after companies like Blue Apron and whatnot. But I think for this one, it could be a niche. There's a huge rise in interest in kind of home cooking.

So the idea was the subscription bread of the month club. So make your own bread. We send you the ingredients. You can call it doughie, doughgirl, dough daddy, yeast club, you know, whatever. I love that you gave with the names. I like DoDaddy. Go Daddy. That was a winner.

Yeah. Right. Hold on. Let me go to GoDaddy real quick and see if I can snatch that. Dooddy. I like that. I don't care what my product is that the next domain is going to be Doodaddy. Do you know anyone who runs a box?

Yeah. There are some that like have really flown under the radar and have like exploded. Like what? I mean, I think the best example I would just share is like, you know, Bapit Fun is like this company that I think venture investors have overlooked for a long time now. And I think it's just like, you know, it's very consistent compounding growth. They've, this year specifically, they really exploded, I think, with COVID. So can I give you the background or what I know about FabFit Fun? And you can kind of fill in the blank. So FabFit Fun, I researched them a bit because, so my business is the hustle. We're an email

business or it started that way. I think FabFit Fun also started that way. So I think it was they gave fitness and beauty related tips to young women via an email, right? So they built that up to like tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people. And they go, all right, well, let's make money in a different way than advertising. And they launched this box. And I think they've been around for around 10 years, right? And they're based out of L.A. I think they raised a little bit of money to start, but not a significant amount.

And they have since grown it to something like, is it, they have 200,000, subscribe or more? I don't remember the exact number of subscribers, but like top line wise, they're in hundreds of millions. Yes. And they send a quarterly box, right? That's right. Yep. And the interesting thing that they've done, and I think, you know, we've thought about a lot as well, is they've created lock-in, you know, post-purchase. So right now, I think that the nuance with subscription businesses is oftentimes, there's a number of types of subscriptions, but like oftentimes the product is the subscription. So like for Spotify, for example, when you pay the subscription, like you are getting Spotify, you are getting access to Spotify and that's the product.

You don't have to pay additional. Same with FAPit Fun, although they do upsell you. I think what we've seen with FAPFIT Fun and even Stitch Fix as well is like they want to move towards one-time purchases that go outside of subscription frequency, which is always like, you know, the grass is always greener. And then the flip side is like for, you know, companies that are more transactional or like one-time purchase, it's how do we layer on more frequency of use, whether that's a subscription box or not? How has FAPFIT Fund done that, do you think? Like, what can, what can I learn? learn from them. Well, what they've done, you know, I think the common trope is like, you know, if you're a media business, you should be doing ecom. And if you're an ecom business, you should be doing

media. And like, frankly, that like nine times at a time that like never works, it's, right. And I would actually go as far as saying it's much harder to do the second where you're ecom and you're trying to build media. But, but I do think FAPA fun has done that, you know, in an interesting way, like post-purchase, you get access to a community that actually like retains you. If you try to turn, like people, like, people, will post like I'm I'm thinking about canceling and people will actively say like hey don't cancel like here's why um I'm still a member but what's the what's the like a good community is like a good cult yeah which means you have like a belief system yeah like cults all have like an identifiable

leader they have like an us versus them mentality they have a unified belief they have a a series of rituals that you typically have to do and they're inclusive what is the what is the belief system that all like we have this thing called trends it's all it has like this entrepreneurial thing what's like the us versus them mentality well I think when it comes to like well I think in e-com you can either sell you know one of I guess like one of three things and like one is you know you can sell the the concept of value and it's like hey you're getting a good you know bang for your buck or you're getting like a deal that you feel smart about or you're in the know or whatever it is

And I think for FAPFit fund, it is like the value sense. And, you know, value is not like an easy thing to build a community around. But, like, there are people who are, like, really passionate about, like, saving that extra dollar. And even though they won't necessarily talk about it that way, I think that community, like, does bond around that. I think there's others where, I guess the other two I was going to say is, like, one is kind of around the, you know, the actual use case. So I think, like, the best, you know, recent example is probably Peloton in which, you know, people just love being Peloton users. and NPS is super high, churn is extremely low, you know, and so and so forth. But I think the third is actually interesting, and there's like a cultural one.

I think, you know, for, and I'll speak directly with like our kind of counterparts, but companies like Glossier, which is oftentimes touted as like the leading kind of skincare slash beauty brand in the venture ecosystem, even though they actually do oftentimes less run rates than like the bootstrapped kind of lesser known, you know, lesser known brands. I think, you know, they put out this feeling of like, hey, we are this cool millennial girl in a big city and, you know, we put out this feeling that it's like a cool 25-year-old, right? The customer set is actually like high schoolers.

And I think I can name a bunch of other examples like this. Like a way, for example, I think when they started, it was this cool millennial like product, you know, got all these influencers. But the actual customer in the beginning was probably business travelers. So I think, you know, I think there's areas to build like an aspiration. like, you know, community where it's like, hey, I want to achieve that. And there was these leaders in our space. Like, for example, with, a way, maybe it was like Carly Klaus or maybe with Glossi. It was actually the CEO, Emily, who built that, like, aura of, like, celebrity. But I think that's

actually the hardest to maintain because, you know, customers are flippant and they'll kind of, like, churn out. Can I tell you, or say something you just said, and Sean, you might like this. So at the hustle, we do giveaways sometimes. So like sign up for the hustle and you win a MacBook Pro. One time we gave away a Tesla, like a $30,000 Tesla. And when we do these giveaways, there's these websites. I'd have to go and remember what they're called, but it's like super savers or it's like there is this.

And we get so much traffic from it. It's crazy. And if you Google like the hustle giveaway, there's these huge communities. and we get so much traffic from it. And it's mostly middle America, stay-at-home moms. And they are doing giveaways like crazy. They are all about saving money. Like, we have these socks that say, act now that's very coastal male branding.

And they don't, like, normally if it were like, if it costs a little bit of money, they wouldn't want that. But because it's free, they're obsessed with it. And like, we have a T-shirt that says always be hustling. And like Bailey from Missouri who's got three kids doesn't want like an always be hustling. Like that's not her mantra probably. But they love this crap. And this FabFit fun thing is,

sounds like it's tapping into that community of this like state home mom, bargain hunter. I have been surprised. Another company that's similar to that is the pennyholder.com, which we talked about recently, which recently just sold for 100 million bucks or 120 or something. It's a crazy community. Yeah, probably not the best customer set, right?

Because I think the, you know, even though the set like the area where most people chase are like, okay, I want to sell to people like me, right? So that's like typically for us, it's like bi-coastals, big city, middle high income, liens left, well-educated, you know, so on and so forth. But I think the actual most consistent customer that's actually the cheapest to acquire is the middle American mom. And she's also that like a pretty big spender too. And if you get her loyal to one thing, like, she's going to be with you for, you know, years and years and years.

And I think that's what a lot of, like, venture, you know, brands kind of overlook sometimes is, like, that's actually who you should be going for. But, I mean, you can make the comparison to, like, DoorDash versus, you know, what Postmates did, like, city versus suburb. But I don't know. I think I would actually say they're a great customer. Yeah, I totally agree. Sean, did you ever see the analytics for Soapub? So Soap Hub was our friend's soap opera news website. Have you seen the analytics?

I've seen you guys posted something about it. You did a blog post. I've seen what you posted publicly because I met him after he sold it. We had the founder of Bleacher Report. So we have this friend who asked this blog. All they did was blog about soap operas. And we had the founder of Bleacher Report look at his Google Analytics. And he goes, I've never seen engagement like this.

And it was all Middle America moms. I'm telling you that market's good. No, no, I totally agree with the Middle American mom. mom is a great market. The super save, like the, what's the first, not penny hoarders, but the one you just said before that. The ones who basically are like, I don't know if that's actually a thing. The professional like contest enterers. That's not the best. Right. They're the ones who are trying to leach your programs and be like, oh, cool, they have a referral bonus. Let's create a giant referral chain and like milk this baby. It's like, they work so hard. And it's like, man, this is like,

this is like $8. Just buy it. It'll be easier. And sometimes it's okay. Like, for example, for Italic, your value proposition is value, right? You're getting. getting an amazing good at like a fraction of the price that you would normally pay. So attracting the value shopper is the right the right move probably. Whereas if your thing is all about status, like for example, my wife has this e-commerce business and one of the kind of core things that people do is collect. They, you know, like I've only, I've only ever seen businesses where you chase customers. You're trying to tell customers to buy from you. Her business, they do new style drops of like, you know, a new product every Friday. And people are lining up.

So it's like an Apple, you know, like an iPhone launch. So basically you have to implement these rules that you can't buy more than X of every product because it's selling out too quickly type of thing. Right. So I've never even seen somebody limit a cart. It's like, aren't you always trying to build the cart to be bigger? And it's like, no, no, no. We have it where you can max buy two items because, you know, we have to, it's like, you know,

when hand sanitizer was flying off the shelves and grocery stores had to put a limit on it, that's what happens there because that's a collector's mentality. they want to get every one of the new the new like stuff that comes out because it's rare and they will wake up in the morning early to be at their computer trying to get it within one minute of the drop like all the revenue happens in a like 120 second period and then it's like over for the day I dig it I'm into it that's a that's a good idea um it's almost like I mean it's real scarcity but it's also like buy enforcing I think the more often you like uh reinforce the scarcity of a of a product to a very active audience, but do so in a classy way of the better. It's almost like Black Friday, right? It's like, hey, you can get this in this very short, bounded period of time, and then it's gone, and you're going to have to wait another year. So I know it's a totally different comparison, but, yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. What else you got? I have so many. I don't know, like, how fast you want me to go through. I have, okay, so I have, like, venture tech businesses, and I have, like, more standard, you know, like, that's fine. Well, well, okay, what did we just cover? Just do go A, B, A, B, A B.

I mean, subscription bread of the month, I think would be great for like someone who wants to just start something, you know, and you can, you know, start at small. And why bread? Why did you pick bread versus some? Margins are, you can, I mean, if you position it as like a premium product or you, you position it as like a utility, hey, like we're skipping the grocery store. You're going to do this anyways. You want the best yeast. You want whatever it is. Like, here's a starter kit.

I think the margins on that and the retention will be really strong if you can. deliver on that. And it's also like, you know, it doesn't have to be expensive. So, um, and also bread's hot right now, Sean, don't you know this? Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, give me the, give me the trend. I mean, everyone knows this. Banana bread in particular is going through the roof right now. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows banana bread is through the roof. Anyone who has a, anybody knows. Nobody knows banana bread is to the roof. A brayu, do you know this? Anyone who has an Instagram or a TikTok knows that home baking in bread, particularly banana bread? You can't use a brayu.

he works for you. Jeremy, am I right or wrong? Is banana bread like surging right now? I'm not often said pears are the fruit of the year. Yeah, I'm just jealous you're not talking about pairs. Okay. Someone actually does. I forgot, so I did see this in the wild somewhere and I thought they did a good job with that. But okay, so that was one idea. Hold on. Let me tell me one thing I like about that, by the way. I think that you want to make bragworthy products, meaning can the product after the consumer has it, is it Instagram worthy? Will they share this on Instagram or TikTok, the thing that they're doing? Because that's going to drive a lot of your adoption.

And this is such a good one where it's like, it's an interesting thing, making bread, it's something people don't usually do. But the skill cap is actually probably pretty low. You're actually going to be able to do it and have a good output. And then lastly, it's bragworthy. It doesn't look like a brag. Like if you bought something expensive and you share it, well, that's only a certain type of person would do that.

But I think a lot of people would happily share that they're doing a fun thing today in quarantine, which is like baking bread at home and shit, happy with how it turned out. So I love the bragworthiness of that idea. I think there's a lot of like subscription things that you can do that are not. Like you won't have fatigue. Like, you know, the downside I think of subscription food, for example, or subscription apparel is like it is, you know, it's limited to quarterly or in the case of food. Like if you did, let's say you actually want to go out to eat, right? Like, what are you going to do with your box? You feel like you have to cook it at some point. So right. Anyways, I think subscriptions are super interesting when it comes.

to actually like product boxes. I think another idea that's a little bit more. This can go either way. I listen to one of your podcasts and I think you guys mentioned Sundays, which I love that business. I think it's like super smart. You want to recap what it is. Oh, so it's basically like it's a speed of products that like kind of provide lawn care.

How do you put it? It's kind of like products to help people who have lawns take care of their lawns. To dumb it down, it's a Roundup alternative that has no chemicals and is DDA seed or whatever you, DDACified. Well, I mean, for people who've lived in cities, I don't even know if they would know what Roundup is. So I think that, I mean, I think that's part of the whole suburban like kind of market. Yeah. Weed killer.

Yeah. Another, this is, I think, a smaller, you know, total addressable market. But I think the basket size could be larger is doing a similar thing for pool care. The number of pools out there are, it's huge. There's actually a lot of software built for, you know, these pool services and so on and so forth. But when you actually do research into the products that they use, it's like, it's like, it's really kind of gnarly old school looking, you know, chemical-based stuff. So that was one idea. Do you guys, first of all, there's this company called Leslie Pool.

Did you guys grow up with pools? No, I have one now. This is the first pool I've ever had. So I used to go to the store called Leslie. With my dad, I would go there called Leslie Pool Supplies. All they do, it's like a relatively small rinky dink store. And you go and you buy like a variety of bleaches. I mean, it was all pretty harsh stuff. They have a market cap. I just looked it up of five billion dollars. It's just a chain of like small stores. You guys probably didn't experience this. But if you have blonde hair, these chemicals were so strong that if I would swim too much, my hair and if you're like a white blonde hair person, you're. hair turns green. Have you ever seen that? No, but that's an amazing, amazing way to position an alternative. So, so there was a guy who reached out from the podcast, a listener who said, hey, I have a

product. I can't remember the name. Sam, you might know this guy also. He might have reached out to you as well. Ravi. Oh, I don't know what his name is, but his product was basically a modern day pool maintenance subscription thing. Kind of like what you're talking about, Jeremy.

So what he was doing is, you know, in pools, they have this like floating little buoy that's kind of like a monitor. So normally the pool guy comes, he sticks this little thing in there and he checks the like chemical, the pH levels and, you know, figures out what's going on. So this guy had basically created a smart sensor. So like, it's just a floating thing in your pool. Anytime on your phone, you can go check the pH levels. You could see if there's like, you know, what the temperature of the pool is, whatever. And then they sell you the kind of like chemical packs, a little like essentially tied pods that you put into this thing and it like, you know, like treats your pool. And I was like, that is a great business idea. And he was doing,

pretty well. I think it's kind of like low seven figures a year in revenue. Yeah, his name is a, it's called My Sutro. So my Sutro.com. S-U-T-R-O dot com. His name's Ravi. He actually was a founder's dojo guy, Sean. So that's how I knew him. He's a good, he's a good dude. He's been at this for years. It does, I don't know why this actually hasn't, isn't significantly larger. It feels like he should be bigger. Yeah. Right. Actually, I think a lot of like, this is so kind of, this is like, I think you guys have talked about like constellation and software and like you know there's so and and um what was the kind of like service titan or something there's so many like opportunities in these like niche neighborhood businesses that you think are like so you know most people would think are so

small but there's like literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of these businesses like across the u.s alone and and providing like verticalized soft this is not um i still don't think it's a venture business but like building straightforward verticalized software for those use cases, such as pool maintenance, which I know exists to a large degree because I did my own research on it. But I think you could do this for a number of those that was actually not on my list. But I can keep going if you want. I could kind of run through a couple if you want. Yeah, keep going. All right. I've got one. So I think Stripe Atlas, for those who don't know, is basically company formation as a service. And this is not new by any means.

And plenty of people have done this from Clerky to, I think there's a new one called First Base and whatnot. Generally, it costs like between maybe $300 to $1,000 depending on the state and service. But I think there are verticals for administration like that that is more niche and you can actually charge more for. So, for example, a trust fund administration, I think could be interesting as a service. There's a lot of like, basically I think. Jeremy, describe Clerky, because I was a user of. Clerky. And I think they've gone out of, I don't know if they've gone out of business, but it's kind of like on autopilot, it seems. Yeah, I think so. I've used, I've used Clerky for two companies in

the past. And it's, it was amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's basically a standardized set of documents that you can use for company formation as a Delaware C Corp, which is what most, you know, venture businesses would form as. And, and you can do it for like, you know, it's so cheap. I think that danger with Clerky is like, every founder, out of the company, there who's listening, like, who's new. The 83B process you like really have to be careful of. I'm not going to explain the whole thing. Just like make sure you do your research and actually file the 83B so that you are purchasing your, you know, shares. The reason why I bring it up is like there's a time limit, but Clerky almost screwed us twice on that. So that was kind of one

downside with it versus an actual, you know, dedicated service. But yeah, I think it's on autopilot And I'm sure they're. So, Clerky is like they had maybe 40 documents that were standardized, but it had a docusign component. And I think it was $9 a document. And we had 36 investors. And so we sent this to them. So 36 times, let's say 10 bucks. So we only paid them 360 bucks. But it was one of those services. Sean and I, you actually just discussed this the other day where you start using it and you're like, oh, it's only this much money. Whatever. You just keep doing it. You keep doing it. And you keep doing it. And it slowly adds. up. Yeah. All right. One more. I have so much. Okay. One is homeschooling software. I think there's a lot of, you know, this is, I think a significantly growing trend in homeschooling, not just because of COVID. I think COVID was an accelerant. So providing software that is, and I think there's a venture company called Primer doing something kind of akin to this, but providing things like attendance, report cards, grading, test generators, admin services where you basically can run a homeschool for you or even a marketplace of, you know, having like dedicated homeschooling teachers.

That was one. So let's talk a little bit about that because I know a little bit about this space. So I was a little bit surprised to learn that about three to four percent of, you know, like school age kids do homeschooling. And that was higher than I thought it would be. It's still a low percentage. But, you know, we're talking about a population of two and a half to three million. And now with COVID, you know, like easily double that, you know, we'll come out of this.

And so let's call it, you have two and a half million customers, three million maybe as a round number. And that's just in the U.S. And they have a very specific set of challenges. So if you want to homeschool your kid, first, each state has a different process to like establish yourself as like a legal homeschool person. So I have a friend who started their business doing Stripe Atlas, one of the previous idea, for homeschooling. So like, hey,

just type in your kid's name and birthday and all that. And we will file the homeschooling paperwork for you. You don't have to figure out what the state of Georgia requires you to do for that. Then, you know, so they got a bunch of people who are like, oh, good,

because I didn't know how to do this. The second problem that, that parents have is you're supposed to document all the work that your kid is doing. So you have to like take photos of their, of their worksheets and blah, blah, so there's like a whole, like,

where do you put those photos? It's just in your camera roll alongside, all your other life photos, that doesn't seem very good. So you could build like, you know, so that's the second part of the stack is like the record keeping. Third part of the stack. Well, what worksheets should they even be using? Are you going to create your own curriculum?

Like, most people who homeschool are not like going to be creating a full set of curriculum with like really good worksheets and whatnot. So they need to access what the heck do I teach my kid on a day-to-day basis. So that's kind of like one whole stack. And there's a company called, you know, Primer that's going after it. My friend Farsis started going after that. He pivoted. to something called ZipSchool.

So ZipSchool basically is doing the Bill Nye, the science guy, live on Zoom. So what he did was he created, he found all these teachers who were kind of like out of work or had extra time. And he filtered them for like who has the biggest personality and can kind of like pop on Zoom. And what he does is like it's like after school education. So you have a kid at home and whether you're homeschooling them and you just want for one hour for them to be with this digital teacher or after school, you just want them to like learn more science or whatever. And all his topics are kind of like magic school bus or Bill Knight, the science guy, where it's like, let's learn about rockets. And it's about like actually like what Elon Musk is doing with rockets. Like something that's interesting that you don't like is just not the like cookie cutter school lesson or like why, you know, why sharks are not the scariest animal in the ocean, right?

It's like stuff like that. That's like it's very intriguing to a student. And then they have a teacher with a green screen behind them and they kind of like live teach a class with like kind of like some low end. special effects so that it's interesting. And all the kids are just kind of like on mute and they're like unmute to like say things from time to time or whatever. And parents pay like a pretty low subscription. It's like pay 50 bucks a month for your kid to be able to go to three, four,

five classes a month. And so he raised a little bit of money from Andrews and Horowitz because there was a little bit of momentum. He was getting classes where he started with like, like, you know, five students showed up. And he was running Facebook ads. And for very cheap, he was acquiring users like, I want to say sub a dollar. he was acquiring users during COVID because every parent in America was like, shit. How the hell am I supposed to teach my kid?

A, I need a babysitter. And B, like, I need to, like, educate my kid because they're, like, out of school for so long. And so he was getting people to come in and he was joining classes. And these classes got up to, like, 500 people. They were breaking the Zoom limit of, like, how many people can be in one session. And now they do, like, more like smaller group classes, I think because people are more willing to pay for that. But I thought this was very interesting. The idea of taking the old Bill Nye, the Science Guy model.

So wait, where they ask now? I mean, what's going on with that company now? I think it's going fine. They have a bunch of teachers on the roster that each, you know, this guy specializes in space. This guy specializes in science and surgeries or whatever, different topics. And they do small group classes like six to eight people and like after school education basically.

And COVID still has like so many people. It's hard to know what's going to happen to this business post COVID. But I would say like this is like a variation of homeschooling. It's not pure homeschooling. It's either something you can add into your homeschoolers. day for an hour or it's a hey i send my kid to public school they come home from school and like they want to watch tv and stuff anyways well we could do this for 30 minutes instead and i feel like at least my kid got like enriched a little bit uh and i'm happily pay the equivalent of like 10 bucks a

week for how to have this tutor basically tutoring my kid over zoom uh but it's done in an educating entertaining way by the way sean are you just wearing a robe yes okay i i just i just i just noticed that. I just thought we should get that out of the way. Were you like, it's audio only, baby. I don't know if anyone sees these clips. I just assume it's audio only. I'm in a room. All right. I want to get three out first. And then I'll kind of shout up for a bit. One is I'm personally, I think you guys might be into this, but I've been really into the idea of like franchises for a long time. I think it's like, you know, I think sometimes I think people, in our ecosystem, at least, like, we'll look down on these types of businesses.

But some of them, like, are phenomenally profitable and they're extremely capital efficient. And it's a really lightweight way to build kind of a brand and a go-to-market strategy without actually having to kind of be a super rich, you know, person to start or raise a bunch of money. I think there's opportunities to modernize a lot of the kind of legacy franchises. So, for example, are you guys familiar with the company called Sonder? Oh, yeah. The hotel kind of company? Yeah, so they basically take over people's leases and they manage the properties.

And originally there's a listing platform to, you know, they would take those properties and they would list it on like Rexillus, Airbnb and so on and so forth and get, you know, they would manage it. And then I think more recently they're starting to like aggregate the demand on their side so that people actually go to saunder.com and then, you know, actually book directly. So they don't have to pay the fee. I think they're like, I think the largest, like one of the largest list, like unified listers on Airbnb at some point. But I think there's an opportunity to do something similar with, with actually fitness centers and gyms. You know, the concept exists for hotels. Like, you know, you'll have like Marriott's or whatever come over and kind of manage the property. But

I think gyms right now, like you have either, you have like a, I think a bifurcation in the market of like really low-end gyms, which you might pay like a, depending on. or you are like 10, 20, 30, 40 bucks a month for, or you have like the really premium gyms of which they're like, you know, in LA it was like 200 or 225 per month for an equinox. And it's an annual subscription and it's a huge upfront commitment. I think there's a mid-market opportunity to do something similar. And I mean, Sondor is familiar to, I think, the U.S. audience.

There's also like Oyo rooms, you know, internationally, which has done this for hotels, but at a very, very, very low-end budget kind of model. I think there's an opportunity to do something in the mid-market for fitness centers and gyms. Right now, obviously, it's like the worst time to do this, but it's an idea that I think is interesting. Along the same lines, I think there's a opportunity to do something similar in convenience stores.

This is actually an area that I've, it's like super unsexy, but like it's a huge, like there's so much volume that goes into convenience stores. And it's for an obvious reason, right? Like there's companies like GoPuff or whatever, but I believe, I think like, they'll get to maybe 10, 15, 20% market penetration at both. Kind of like what you come is right now. I think convenience stores will probably always exist. But right now, like, it's super, you know, in New York, you have bodegas and, like, suburbs.

You have like 7-Elevens. But I think there's an opportunity to either do a roll-up. And the reason why I think there's an interesting use case there is, like, right now, convenience stores are retailers and they have to buy wholesale from brands or distributors. And they don't have any negotiation leverage as an independent, like, as a one kind of of man show or, you know, a small shop. But I think if you had a larger kind of supply base to purchase off of, that could be interesting. And you could do it either as a franchise model or as a roll-up of your own. And I also think the McDonald's, you can tell them all over here, but like,

you know the McDonald's model, how like franchisees will actually buy, they'll buy the license to become a franchise, but then McDonald's will actually buy the real estate. And then the sale, the proceeds from the actual franchise will actually go towards the real estate purchase. I think that actually could be interesting because convenience stores have like the best real estate possible in like a lot of these bigger cities and sometimes suburbs because they're in the middle of like a town. Sam, I don't know if you were going to say anything there. I think, uh, no, my wheels are turning.

I'm thinking. I'm scheming in my head. Um, this is, this is a fun one. Like for anyone who runs an American factory, there's a lot of these like smaller kind of, you know, let's say 2,000 to 5,000 square foot factories in the U.S. I think there's actually opportunities to create like really well-loved, high affinity branded factories. I know this sounds really weird, but like think Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, if you run a chocolate factory and you like did a daily show on like, hey, I'm grinding like, you know, I just got my

shipment of, you know, cacao. I'm like going through the roasting process or you could do it for coffee. I think there's actually a lot of opportunity for building brands online. I think Emma Chamberlain I mean, this is a very far-fetched example, but like what she's... Who? Oh, I'm a Chamberlain's, like, one of the biggest YouTube. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this woman. I just discovered her.

What does she do? I don't know her. She's just a cool... Yeah, she's just a YouTuber, but she's like pretty cool. I don't know. She's like, you know, like obviously cute and charming and entertaining. What does she talk about? Or she just talks about her life.

It's like a lot. It's almost like a very, um, Nothing, yeah. But interesting, like the, I think, you know, you guys talked about the, I think it's Clout Kitchens, which I love, by the way, I think like those guys are, you know, read and, and Night Media, they're also investors for Italic as well. But yeah, amazing people to have. But I think the, you know, most times when people do merch with influencers, it's like, it's

crap. Like you're not, you're going to buy it like maybe if you're a super fan. But like, you know, it's a T-shirt. Like, what are you actually going to do with it? But I think when you do things that are like really on brand So for example, what Emma did was she partnered with a A coffee manufacturer who's really into coffee She partnered with a coffee manufacturer and launched Chamberlain coffees

And I think like they're probably doing multiple of what we're doing right now for Italic So I think there's opportunities to do things So it's wait let's we got to talk about this for a second So Sean this Emma Chamberlain Google her she's like 19 She's got the she kind of she looks like this I don't know what her stereotype is like quirky. Quirky.

Quirky, likable, cute. I don't know what her stick is. I watched a video of her where she rented a hotel room by herself because she wanted a stay vacation. And I have no idea why I watched it. It was a 20 minute series. She's just entertaining. She's good.

Her tagline, Chamberlain Coffee. Zero bullshit. Just coffee. Chamberlain coffee. Zero bullshit. Just coffee. It's like a legit brand now. When it started, it was kind of like, you know, a crappy Squarespace site.

But now, like, it's a beautiful. beautiful brand. I think it's like, I think that's like an influencer slash celebrity brand done right. And it's so rare. So do you think does she own 100% of this? You think? Because I'm looking usually here's, and I like to go through the stuff with the listeners, what I like to do is whenever I go to these websites, I scroll all the way to the bottom and I find out who it owns the copyright or trademark or what the copyright or trademark is. And then if you typically Google it in quotation marks, you can find out who owns it. But I don't see that on her site.

I think, I think, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to speak like incorrectly. How much revenue do you think this woman makes off this? The top line sales on Chamberlain coffee. You think they do more than 40 million in sales? No, I don't think yet. I think they started like last summer or so. I think they're still getting there.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they got there pretty soon. And the best part about coffee is it's subscription, right? And I think with these types of deals, like, if you're a factory out there and, you know, you can say, like, your margins are already crap, right? Like, that's a whole point of Italic is to help you, you know, basically earn margin and kind of gain your own distribution channel of your own. But if you're saying, like, hey, we can sell a, and by the way, for factories, like, normally they'll make 15 to 20% on top of cost of goods. You know, and this is like, regardless of the category, regardless of where you are, whether you're in the U.S. or China or, you know, Italy, it might be 25, 30% sometimes. but that's like on cost of goods. A brand will buy that and sell up for 10x.

It's not like normally. So if you even said like, hey, to a factory, hey, we will do a 50-50 revenue split. You're already like on a retail price and you match what's on par with the rest of the industry. You're basically like more than five-xing their margins. And that's not like an abnormal. And in exchange, they give you what? distribution, which is the most expensive part of the game anyways. So, and I think, you know, I think that you talked about this previously as well, but I think like influencers are late,

most are lazy. Like, they don't have an aspiration to go beyond kind of like what they're currently doing. They're happy to do a promo, happy to do whatever. But if you made it really easy and I was just like, hey, like we have a designer, we have a, you know, whatever, it's kind of like, we'll build a business in a box for you, but, but it's actually like catered to you in a way, like, A good example is I was looking at a chocolate factory and right above, it was in Marin County and like really high quality. Why? Why were you doing that?

We were manufacturers from years and years ago for not, it was originally chocolates and then we moved into gummies. This is like 2016, 2017. But they went for sale and I was like, okay, this is interesting. Might as well actually look. There's this guy who's like a sexy Willy Wonka TikTok. character. I forgot his name. But just imagine like, hey, literally put that guy in the factory, make him do a video once a day. He's going to be huge. Like, he's already huge. And you could do like

a golden ticket, you know, one out of every thousand. You get like a thousand bucks or something like that. There's all these like, I think it has to be catered for the influencer, but I think there's branded factory opportunities where you have, you know, a rupture. And, you know, I know there's agents who do this for like skincare and beauty. But like, I think beyond the standard merch and skincare, there's a lot of opportunity that's like a lot more interesting than, you know, selling a t-shirt. Did we talk about the Bucky's thing, Sam? What is that? Maybe.

Okay. So, all right. So this is a crazy story. So I got a DM. By the way, this is the best part about doing this podcast. So I just get DMs that are interesting, interesting characters. Do you have your DMs open? Yes.

My DMs are first open. I had to turn them off a little while. For what? I don't know. I just didn't want to. to read up all of them. While you look for that, can we just say this Chamberlain coffee thing? I'm buying it. I'm buying this stuff. This site's beautiful. It's great.

It's a totally convinced me to buy. It's end to end like a really well done brand. And you barely, even for venture back companies at trial, like it's very rare that you see that happen. No, they crushed it. Sam loves cute girls and curly font. So he was in at first sight. All right. So this guy says, I met this guy Chris. And Chris says, hey man, I got kind of a crazy story. And I think the hustle might have actually done a feature on this. I'm not 100% sure. But he tells me this story.

He goes, so there's this chain of kind of like gas stations in Texas called Buckees. I lived in Texas. I didn't even know about this. Have you guys ever heard of this chain? Most people, if you're not in Texas, you probably haven't heard of this. Buckys? Buckys, it's BU, you know, BUCC-E. The gas station.

Exactly. They're gas. They're known for two things. One, they have the cleanest restroom. So if you're on a road trip or you're stopping, Buckees is a place to stop because they have the cleanest bathrooms out there, let alone for a gas station. The second thing is they have a whole bunch of snacks. They basically have their own branded snacks in the gas station or whatever that you buy,

and it's built kind of like a cult brand. They're an influencer gas station, if you will, right? So you get Buckees that has this loyal following. It's like, you know, every kind of region has their version of this. Like I went to school in North Carolina and cookout. was like, oh, you got to go to cookout and get the shakes or whatever. Like there's these little like regional brands that people just go crazy about. And so this guy, Chris, Chris Corner, he decides to start buying.

He notices that Buckees does not have e-commerce. You can buy it in the store, but there's no e-commerce. So he just starts buying a whole bunch of products from the store and then just selling those same things online. And he's just like, oh, let me test this out. So he runs some ads. It basically is like, oh, if you love Bucky's like, here's a way to buy Buckees, beaver nuggets which are like their little like best-selling popcorn type of thing right here here's their chocolate covered milk you know like chocolate covered thing or whatever here's their hat here's

their mug and so he just starts selling this kind of like you know like on the down low basically and um he's and so he calls it texasnack.com or something like that uh Texas snacks over the X and I'll put the link here but he starts selling it and sure enough the ads start performing phenomenally people who see this are like oh my God I love Buckees or my husband loves Bucky. So this is the perfect gift for them. They'll feel so good. So he starts selling this and the ads start performing great. And so he's like, yeah, you know, I'm spending X and here's my Roas and he's showing me the numbers. I'm like, wow, these numbers are kind of like amazing for e-commerce. And he's like, I was like, so what is this

just going to get like shut down or whatever? And he's like, no, actually they reached out and they were like, hey, this is cool what you're doing. Like we actually tried e-commerce a few years ago. Like we spent $3 million like setting up e-commerce and like never went anywhere. We kind of like just ditched it. But that's cool that you guys are doing this. Like how can we help? And he's like, well, you know, like I'd like to, you know, just get the blessing from you. And, you know, as long as I'm like an approved vendor, this is great.

And the second thing that he did with that was like he's buying it at the retail price. So he's not like asking them for some. He's not eating into their business at all. He's buying it from a store at the retail price. He's just upcharging it from there for people who want it delivered. And he himself owns a 3PL. So he's like, ah, this is perfect. I can fulfill this really easily.

So I loved this little story. I thought this was like a very clever local thing to do. Basically, similar to what we had talked about with Tai Lopez, which is like take these established brands. Kirk, who reached out to you? Chris. His Twitter handle is serial trep, like serial entrepreneur. And I saw, I was like, you have like 50,000 followers. How do you have somebody followers? He's like, oh, like I was doing some Bitcoin stuff like, you know,

a few years ago. It got really popular. You know, like, you know, John McAfee was invited me to his house for some shit and like kind of got blown up from that. But like, yeah, I changed my domain name. I changed my handle now. So that, you know, it's more generic, not about crypto. Okay, listen, I'm going to talk about something that a friend has been telling me that he wants to do. And I'm going to, I'm going to mention it because I have to. I'm looking at sendeats.com. So if you go to Texas Snacks.com, that's this guy's website. You scroll to the very bottom. It looks like it's owned by SendEats.

SendEats.com. And basically, it's a service that, how do they describe themselves? They just do it with that Bucky's things for everyone. This is the same guy. This is their, this is his company. So basically they're a 3PL, which basically just means they're like the warehouse and fulfillment. So you store your products there.

They pack it and ship it out to your customers for you. And in their About page, they say in 2020, they expanded to cold chain. Do you know what cold chain storage is? It's basically where you're temperature controlled, temperature handled, right? Yes. And a lot of insiders of this space, this legit food logistics, I don't know what you will call it, but I've been talking to some friends in that space.

And many people have said to me cold chained expansion, cold chain storage is the number one category for growth. Oh, it's crazy. You can't, you literally can't find a vendor for it right now. It's like I'm telling my parents have a warehouse in Chicago and they have like a manufacturing business. That's our family business. But like I'm trying to get them to like convert their warehouse to a cold chain like cold storage. So can you ex.

I don't really know too much about what that means in detail. Can you explain to me, Jeremy, what that means? Why is it the need exploding? Is it a COVID thing or just in general? Well, I think it's just in general. Basically like, you know, and by the way, this is a really interesting. area. I actually personally invested in this company called Airhouse. It was founded by the founder and CEO of SHYP. That was my first job out of college, and that's when I met Sean.

So anyways, cold chain and cold chain logistics and in storage specifically is you have to have it if you work with like a distributor or you sell any perishable product that is not like dry goods. So, like, let's say we're talking about Oatley, for example. I don't know Oatley supply chain. This is just a guess. But if Oatley wants to distribute that product to Whole Foods, you know, they need to store it. They'll produce it more likely than not in the U.S. right now. You know, they'll have suppliers, you know, wherever produce it in the U.S.

They'll need to have a pickup, which will be a reefer, so like a refrigerator truck. And then that reefer will drop it up. Yeah, that's what it's called. They drop it off at like that cold store. So you have like those 3PLs like have to have that space allocated. And more often than not, it's like the whole space. It's not like half half. And it's more expensive store, just more.

But if you want to introduce it to the whole foods, like you have to do it. And retail is just like, you know, popped off ever since COVID. Or grocery, not retail. Grocery is popped off ever since, you know, COVID started. So. And I don't think that's slowing down by any means, especially with like nowadays, a lot of the cold storage fulfillment centers used to not. to direct the consumer fulfillment. It was purely for retail.

As a lot of these brands transitioned online for COVID, I think the need for directed consumer kind of distribution went up a lot. And the cost of this is really high. And both in terms of shipping to a customer, but also the setup cost. So yeah, there's basically not enough like cold storage in the U.S. right now for like a new brand if you want to start. So start this company. Quit selling pot, not.

Or not pot. What is your parents warehouse for? They do, they've been doing like very heavy duty industrials manufacturing for a long time. So they've produced parts for like Tesla like general motors, like et cetera, et cetera. So it's like mining auto. So you were buying Tesla stock early. You're like, oh shit, look at this purchase order, baby. We got to buy it.

I was not smart enough to do that. No. At least you weren't dumb enough to sell it. Tesla, like, if you're actually a vendor for Tesla, I think the irony, this is not from my parents, but I think this is just in general, like I've heard, is they come to you saying, like, you know, they're big, you know, they're just like, hey, we're this huge, huge company. But in reality, like, the orders aren't actually that big relative to, I mean, this is a common story, right?

Like, Ford ships a zillion times more, you know, cars than Tesla does. But, like, the market. I have a quick question, Jeremy. I mean, you are somewhat steeped in this VC world a little bit. I mean, you got your foot in it. Your family, are they, would they own warehouses? They have a manufacturing company. So they produced.

Were they born and raised here in Chicago? Classic Asian immigrant story. Yeah, and I'm stereotyping you, and I was right. So there are these immigrants who came here from, and they're the American dream, right? they started probably a small business. Maybe they had like some type of store and they're like, oh, we actually should start making the thing. And they like have slowly built it up over like two decades, right?

Yeah. In this case, four. Yep. Great. So the American dream and pretty traditional, right, of like doing it slowly. Probably maybe they took a little bit of debt, but they certainly didn't have investors, right? Yep, yep, yep, just slow and steady. Yep.

Slow and steady. Is it lucrative? Has it done well for them? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think I actually don't even know the numbers and they won't tell me. So I actually don't know. Another classic. Super high income.

Like, you know, super rich. I think we're like very healthy between middle to high income. So my question is this. What how has your experience of like raising money and trying to like, I mean, I'm sure maybe they saw that and they were like, this is outlandish. Why are you doing this? This is stupid. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I mean, that's at least how my family was. But how has your experience and your friends experience differed. from them and which do you think you like better? Well, that's a huge question, actually. I mean, you could ask that to, like, everyone in Silicon Valley, and I think you'd get, like, a thousand different answers. You know, I think when I was growing up, I'm sure you guys, like, probably felt similarly. Like, I think didn't feel perfectly, you know, like the classic Chicago track.

And Chicago's like a very specific market. I'm from St. Louis, by the way. Oh, nice. Okay. So you get it. It's like you grow up, you become an accountant. You go to U-I, you go become an accountant at a big four. Or work in insurance or a bar or something.

You get married and like your life is not work. It's your life, right? And your sole purpose is like to fill, you know, your family's needs and continue, so on and so forth. And I think like when you have an immigrant, I think another thing I will say is growing up Asian in the Midwest is very different than growing up Asian in the West Coast and also the East Coast. Like in the Midwest, like you're talking about like Korean churches, you know,

super, like, conservative, you know, education is everything. Whereas if you grew up in the West Coast, like, you have Asians who, like, go homeless and then you have Asians become billionaires. Like, neither of those really happened in the Midwest. So I think for me, I was like, hey, I want to get out of here, move to somewhere else. And I think in the beginning, like, it was 100% like just hustle. I was like, okay, go big or go go home. Like, that's the whole reason why I dropped out and did the whole, you know, field fellowship thing and like so on and so forth, all of which I'm really, grateful for. But I think as I get older, I think

and that's the irony of like being 25. I guess like I've been on this path for six, seven years now. And I feel like ancient by now, but relative to a lot of the newcomers. But I think you know, now that you've been in the game for a bit, it's like, okay,

the flip side is now like, I think when we started in 2014-ish, you know, there were so many narratives that I think are no longer true today. So, you know, remote, there was know what you could do. If you wanted to raise money, like, you had to basically kill yourself to do so. This is like a 24-7 hustle. This is the era of like, I think, the Uber's and so on. Whereas nowadays, I think like, you know, founder, I don't know if it's because more capital

has flown into the, you know, the ecosystem so that founders have more, you know, leverage. But I don't know. I think that the opposite, you know, the more conservative, like compounding side of the business is, I think, equally valued now, not by investors by any means, but I think buys as a founder. It's an actual legitimate option. Whereas if you're in San Francisco in like 2013, there's no way you were going to do that. It's like you're going to look down in every company unless it was raising money. You were kind of always comparing, you know, who raised more, whatever. But nowadays, like a lot of those companies are way bigger than ours. So I don't know. It's, it's, uh, which, which are you referring to that's bigger than you? Like a glossier

or I don't know who you consider a, actually, I, I love like the glossy brand. I think they're like they did a great job. But I will say, like, hey, if you were glossy and you were the founder there, you gave up, like, more than probably half your company and you had co-founders or whatever. No, I bet you she owns 10%. Yeah. I bet she owns 10%. I mean, that's a lot, though.

It's a billion dollar business, maybe. I mean, who, that's true. Maybe. But then I think on the flip side, there's, like, companies like milk makeup, decium, you know, I can name so many here that probably have achieved similar run rates, but they kept the entire thing, you know, in-house. and when it comes to an exit, you know, you keep the whole thing. And by the way, like, you don't have to kill yourself day on day and day out to, like,

hire engineers, whatever it is. And they've achieved, and Jim Sharks, like, probably the more recent example of this, right? So, I don't know. And Jim Shark, the comp, you could use as, like, outdoor voices, right? Like, which is both are great brands, but like, yeah, the woman who started outdoor voices was fired. Exactly. Well, I think what your parents are doing is,

the more interesting path, which is like, you know, the easier it gets to start certain businesses, and I'd say e-commerce is getting easier and easier by the day to start, the harder and harder it will be to build durable, successful brands. And the more valuable things like, you know, cold chain, you know, cold chain logistics or, you know, being a manufacturing plant that's providing, that's, you know, that's building for, you know, 50 different brands. You know, I feel like this. You know, that's where the durable value is because it's very hard for a little fish like us. It's like, oh, I got an idea to swim upstream and go do what they do, whereas it's very easy for, you know, another person to enter the fold and start selling their DDC chocolates and gummies and shirts and hats and whatever else. And so I think that like the long term, you know, compounding, most value is from defensibility.

And I just think that like having hard to do stuff is much more defensible than the like kind of, a quick, you know, D to C thing. But, you know, there's something, that doesn't mean you can't make money doing both, but it's like which one ultimately is more valuable. And I think, you know, where your parents is at is actually where a lot more value is to be had. And I wonder what would happen if you took like a technologist or an innovator and you know, who was like, like, your parents probably don't think, wake up every day trying to like grow and expand and more, more and more.

Like they're probably like, you know, like running a good solid business every single day. And like, that's their mindset. Like I wonder what would happen if, if I took away all. your other projects and 25 year old you took over your family business, where does that business go in the next 10 years? Probably 10x and becomes a billion dollar like, you know, industrial family, you know? People have done, I have a couple of friends who come from manufacturing families and they basically like put out a consumer brand on top and they're doing like, you know, one of my friends started Outer, which is like the furniture company and now they're

doing like tens of millions. So they own their factory? It was a, I think it was a family business for the manufacturing. Same with Buffy, like the comforter. They bootstrapped for a while before, you know, taking on capital and that was a family business. There's so many examples like that. But these are just the three ideas that I wanted to share. And then I'll officially be done. Cool. Let's do it. One is, I think these are like the more controversial ideas. But I think like, you know, nowadays you, as a founder, you can actually have the way to do whatever you want. I think Alcoholics Anonymous online is actually a really good idea. We've talked about that. Oh, have you? Okay. Perfect. little bit. I know. I mean, go for it. But we talked to, there's, I think we talked about this a while ago. No, this is super interesting. And there's a company called The Tempest that has, that was launching around when we started talking about this. And so they're actually further along now. I wonder, we should do a checkup on a month. Just to finish the idea, you were saying AA online, basically, digital mobile app or something. It doesn't even have to be specifically like AA. I think there's like a million like specific, you know, use cases. But I think the, the, the, uh, the bigger idea was just like,

hey, can you build a specialized community for support groups? And it doesn't have to be like an all-encompassing, generalized, like, universal. Here is a support group platform like Reddit. But instead, I think you can create like customized, you know, product ties like versions of each. So, you know, in any case, like, you have the steps and, you know, there's a number of other ones for like mental health or whatever it is. So that was one. The second one is just following up on something you guys have talked about a bunch, which is, and this could go either in venture or lifestyle. I think, you know, you guys have talked about, like, Andrew, like, what he's done with the Capital Daily, I think is awesome.

Like, I think everyone respects that. I think the way he goes about building businesses is very, you know, specific and well-known nowadays to him. But I do think there's actually a venture approach as well in which you can create more of a democratized system of like, hey, we're going to find local editors in, you know, mid-market cities. For example, here, like, Provo is a pretty big city around here. And there's, like, some Boise, you know, so on and so forth. And I think, like, a lot of those, basically the idea is, like, I think you can create a modern day patch, which was acquired, you know, however many years. Yeah.

Well, their, patch is still going, getting after. Yeah. No, I, I think the idea, like, patches, I think the reason patch kind of sucks as a user is, like, the content is, like, not curated whatsoever. There's like. And it's just a little old looking. Yeah, it's old. It's like there's so many things going on.

But if you just have like a paid, you monetize through subscription businesses as opposed to advertising. I agree. And like a dollar a week or whatever it was. I think there's enough people in those like mid-market cities that you can actually build a sizable like, you know, multi-million dollar run rate per city per country business. And your job as a venture company would be to build the tools to empower and source those editors. Kind of like the athletic actually as a good example. Yeah.

And if people are curious, Patch was started by AOL, I think. It was like Tim Armstrong. It was like, it was Tim Armstrong. He was a he was an AO. Tim Armstrong helped start, uh, was an early Google guy. And then for a minute, he was a CEO of AOL. Patch was his baby. I don't know if he started it or if he bought it. I don't know. I forget. But it was like a localized news website, I guess. And it's never gone out of business. And I think now they're doing tens of millions of revenue, but it was like touted as like the next big thing and it didn't exactly become the next big thing. Yeah. And I have a bunch more about my last one. I'll just keep kind of short. I know actually I'll just kind of like run through them and I won't even like explain. I just want

to get these ideas out there. And if anyone's working on these like please do let me know because I've been thinking about these a lot. One is so actually you actually mentioned the manufacturing piece of this. But I think Uber was probably the best, like, modern example of a managed marketplace in which, like, when you actually, I think you guys talked about this as well. But like, when you use the Uber service, you're not thinking of like, hey, I'm like contracting Uber to find me a driver to use their car. It's like, I'm booking an Uber versus Airbnb where it's like, I'm booking Airbnb, but it's like a specific stay. So I think the concept of managed marketplaces actually hasn't ventured into business services as much as it could. A couple of companies have done this already. So I think flexibly. export was a great example of doing this for a modern day like freight brokerage. Zometry was actually the one I was going to mention that has done this for manufacturing. So they basically aggregated a marketplace of preferred manufacturers underneath the hood so that when you place an order with them or sample or whatever, like they'll go and kind of allocate this order to the right person at the right time.

There's also, I mean, on the 3PL side, like that was I think the past 10 years, but now in the past three to four years, there's companies like Airhouse. flex, you know, flow space that have built like four PLs or wrappers on top of these. Channel 8 is another one. Pilot is one that has done this for bookkeeping. Bench has done this for bookkeeping. So I think managed marketplaces is a good idea. Financing for niches is a good idea as well.

I think like if you provide financing for products like weddings or, you know, or even like home repairs or maintenance, I think there's a lot of room there. And you can actually charge a premium. This is a lifestyle business. I think if you built a brand called Kids Next Door and you offered things like back to school products, lunchbox, composition notebooks, backpacks. I think there's a niche business there. Okay, I'm almost done, promise. Order via QR codes.

This is an area, like, I lived in China a bunch over the past decade. And this is an area where, like, every time I come back to the States, you kind of wonder, like, where is the American, like, innovation in this? Why don't we just, like, all the POS systems have the ability to order and transact through. QR and then you can actually run the transaction through Apple Pay, Google Pay, you know, whatever it is, Venmo, even cash app. But all of them are local. Like right now the issue, like right now the innovation on menus and ordering has, on quick service restaurants have like ended at a QR code showing you the menu. Like the, I don't know why anyone, like, toast should do this. Like they should just connect the final step, which is like actually let them transact. And this is how like every restaurant in China works,

whether it's a high-end one or a low-end one. Last one, group buying. This is something that does not, like, it exists in middle, like, you know, I think, you know, the classic like Tupperware parties or whatever in like Middle America. But on the reason I think, you know, there's this company called Pindu-O-N-O-N-N-N-N-U-O-N-I-E-O. I don't know. How do you spell that? Oh, P-I-N-D-U-O.

It is actually, I think, the craziest venture story here. Yes, Sean has brought this up many. It's insane. But the mechanic that people, I think, oftentimes fixate on when it comes up in DoDua is like the group buying. I don't actually think that's the reason why it succeeded. They had group buying like prior to this. There was two companies that eventually like merchant won. It's a really crazy founding story. But like they focused on produce. And I think the concept of actually like getting one person in a community to buy bulk produce and then distribute it to like the rest of the moms or whoever it is. That's the primary kind of like cooker. I guess the chef in the household is I think actually what led to PDD like doing really well in the beginning. So I think it's if you can figure out. So how do the logistics of PDD work? So I so so definitely it's you buy in bulk and save. So it's like a community can kind of buy vegetables, fresh produce. So is it actually one person receives it that's like a you know, one of the customers holds it and then distributes it out themselves or does PDD deliver to each house? It's it's changed over the years. You know,

nowadays, I think they've built the mechanic so that it's, it's, it's, uh, the payments will actually happen like separately. So they'll, uh, orchestrate the payments and then they'll also ship separately. So it's just all about like lowering KAC at that point. It's just like, hey, can I get you to refer someone else like now and then, you know, as opposed to waiting later. Um, but there's companies like, um, earlier on and what they did like in China, there's companies called like nice twin, um, Miss Fresh, etc. Where it is like, one person who buys for a local community and you get like a huge kind of bundle of product and you distribute it locally. So it's almost like a the basket size is enormous and the frequency

of use is very high. So group buying and then, okay, this I know I said last time about this is actually my last one. Okay, this is probably the craziest one. But it's like if there's any like hard tech people out there that I think are like into this, I actually, think this is a potentially like really big opportunity. This is the most out there. So I was thinking you could build a like we we know right now like we have crop failures a lot and and and there's also a shortage of honeybees. Like honeybees are actually like going down in population. You're talking to a beekeeper in San. He's an actual beekeeper. Oh, okay, well, anyways.

I mean, I don't know anything. I just bought it off Amazon. Like, it's not like I like, I can't tell you about bee stats. All I know is I had some bees. Yeah, the idea is basically like, hey, can you build either autonomous crop pollinators, which I think is actually an increasing challenge right now for. Well, wouldn't that just be a drone? It's like a drone bee?

Well, I mean, yeah, you could you could take it either way. but I think like right now the issue like specifically with the companies like Monsanto and whatnot is like you have kind of like like how do you even put it like you have spread between like Monsanto based crops as well as like non Monsanto based crops and then like that genetic variation can actually cross like it like there's no physical barrier to prevent like a crop crossing over and there are all there are the actual like the actual like. service right now for pollinating crops is a beekeeper, like literally going to a farm and like releasing bees and saying like, okay, and I'm going to charge you for the day. And I think this is going to be continuing like, you know, trend. I know this is really out there, but I actually think there's a big opportunity for it. It's actually not that out there. I don't understand the idea.

So what would be the idea here? So you would do what? Hold on. Listen, Sean. What you have to do is right now, if you're a beekeeper and these are people who I bought my bees from, they actually, you pay money and sometimes they'll drive literally cross-country and a farmer will pay a fee and a beekeeper will bring literally hundreds of hives. I own two hives.

So someone would bring like hundreds and they would place them in your field for maybe four weeks and then at the end of the bees pollinating because you need bees in order to grow the plant. So the bee goes from plant to plant to plant and then doing so drop seeds and stuff like that. or I think drop seeds probably but okay I don't know if it's dropped seeds but something happens

rubs the pollen on each other yeah yeah like it helps create more plants is basically what it does and a farmer will pay for one month of that and then the beekeeper goes back picks up their bees

brings them home grows more gets more and then does it again every year. That's not crazy like you look to pollinate commercial like large scale

crops you literally yeah like like millions of acres, like, this is actually how it's done. I mean, it's mind-blowing to me. And the bee population is, like, dying. Like, it's dropping year over year. So what would be the solution? So you're saying a non-bee solution for the pollination? Well, I think you could do two ways. Like, you could do, like, you could do it, like, via, like, large-scale drone. And, and I think, like, I actually,

I mean, you could do it that way in which, like, you basically blanket a certain, like, set area. The alternative is you actually go, like, actually try to create, like, micro, you know, I don't know if it's, I don't know if you talk about it, like, from the standpoint of, like, a robot B, but I think there's ways to go about pollinating a, engineer a B, basically. You could even have a, like, you can even have, like, a standardized, like, robot, kind of, like, drive between, I guess, the rows of a crop and, and, like, spray. I don't know. There's, I just think there's an opportunity there. I invested in this company called PICA a couple years ago that's doing like autonomous crop dusting in New Zealand.

They never got the license, I don't think, in the U.S. yet. But I think there's a lot more opportunity in like the commercial farm. Like there's all these like really, I know I think Sam, you're really into trucking. But I think there's all these like opportunities on like farming that is just like as large. And it's a really, I mean, if you think about it, it's like critical to everyone, right? Whether it's vegan or beyond. My friend, this is what I've been saying since. beginning of this podcast.

Like sometimes people dismiss trucking and particularly farming. My parents are in that industry. And I'm like, if the truckers go away, you're not getting anything. And if the farmers can't farm, you're not going to eat anything. No one's hating on truckers and farms. Everyone loves our truckers. We love our farms. That's not what anybody's saying.

The only thing I was ever said is like, hey, if these trucks can drive themselves, you probably won't have trucking be the number one job in America. You know, so maybe those truckers will have to shift into doing something else if the trucks drive themselves because maybe we don't want humans driving 18 hours a day as like they're, you know, the way they live their life. My point is that I just think driverless trucks is quite far. The only thing I was just going to make a point here was just like, hey, those industries are like, I think trucking now is recognized by like the community as like, hey, this is actually

really big opportunity. But I think the commercial farming industry is like, it's like as large. I think as this trucking, and they're like really big opportunities that if you have any interest in business applications, wouldn't you rather build like, I mean, this is my whole thing. I started, I dropped out to start a company in HR SaaS and like no kid drops out to go and work on like HR tech, right? Like that's not what you dream of. But if your goal is to make money and that's like what you want to do through software or technology, like it's a really great. place to spend time. How are you, and we should wrap up in a second, but how are you spending your time right now?

Because you have this business italic, which I imagine is, that's like your job. You know, that's your 95 or more than that. But you also have this not pot thing. It sounds like you are, you all types of scheming. How do you? Well, for what it's worth, a lot of these ideas are things that like I've just jotted down over the years. So it's not like in preparation for this podcast.

I was like, okay, kind of come up with like a hundred ideas. They're just things that I think I'd really love to see in the world. or someone to take on and whether that's in the facet of being an investor or, or, you know, advising or whatever it is. I really don't have much time. So I just wanted to get these out there and I feel like this is the perfect place to do it. In terms of day to day, it's like, yeah, it's like, you know how this startup boundary grind is?

It's like nine to late at night. 99% of it is Italic. And it's, it's, it's, like a really hard business to start. it is not something that I recommend to anyone, so please don't try to copy. It's not worth it. Believe me. I mean, hopefully it'll be worth it for, you know, Sean and every one of our investors and so on. But the amount of work that goes... This is why I love pimping out Bitcoin, because the more people that copy me, the higher the price goes. That is the beauty of Bitcoin. And as long as we all keep doing that, we all win.

And last question, did you used to own Fountain.com? We still do. Yeah, it's, uh, it was, I think it was like, it was like 80K or something. Interesting. That's, I don't know. How much was Italic.com? I think Italic was like 115. Did you use a broker or what'd you do? Yeah, yeah. We used to broker. I mean, 100K, look, how much have you raised?

We've raised about, uh, 15 now. I mean, 100K for Italic.com. If you're trying to build a big brand, I mean, yeah, please. He paid in cash. She just brought the briefcase for that one. I mean, 115. I really did. I tried to get the guy. The guys had it since the 90s.

Like, you know, I tried every trick in the book before I went to a broker and just said, like, let's get it. So, right. Yeah. I use my sister's college email, like, you know, all that stuff. Oh, wow. That's smart. Well, I got a run. Thank you, Jeremy.

This is awesome. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, dude. Good seeing you as always. Thank you. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun. All right.

See you. We'll share this. Talk soon.