My First Million - #22 - Cloud Kitchens, Kava Bars & Religious Products

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. This week they talk about food joints that no one visits and only serves people through delivery, bars that get you semi high, making products from the largest free IP: religion, businesses that eliminate choice, non-alcoholic beverages, profiting off book summaries and fixing dog owner issues.If you enjoy this and would like a weekly briefing on super in-depth research in these trends, Sam has offered a discount on The Hustle's Trends newsletter, go to https://trends.co/million.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Okay, a million dollar brainstorm. We're back. You've been in Hawaii. Tell us about that. If you guys Google lobby conference, you'll see it. A lot of people write about it as if it's this douchey event, which is it definitely checks the boxes from the outside of being that. Okay, what's douche about it? It's expensive and it's in Hawaii and it's much of tech people. I don't think that's dushy, but it definitely checks many people's boxes. And it's like exclusive, right? It's like 50 people. It's like invite only. 100 people. Yeah. It's a small number. It's like an invite only thing. So it definitely checks all the boxes to fit that stereotype. It's called lobby conference. So how'd you get invited? One of my investors, Narandra, he referred me. Okay, so it's this, you can Google it to learn about it, but it's this event hosted by

David Hornick, one of the partners at August Capital, a VC, 150 or 200 people, invite only. They've done it for 13 years now. And the guys who were there on the first year, many of them are still there. And it's like internet, oh, geez, like Tony Shea, founder of Zappos was there. Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, dig. I had dinner and hung out most of the time with Tim Westridge and founder Pandora. Like all these guys who were like maybe my age now, but are in their first.

40s who were still trying to have a hit and have now had some hits. It was awesome. It was great. Two takeaways. Yeah. Number one, Gen Z totally, they're fucked. Okay. Why? We talked about like, were there's this one. Were they there? I don't think they're there's like, we had these like little meetups about like and we would talk about interesting things. Gen Z, I didn't realize that they're having very little sex. They're doing a lot of drugs, but they're not drinking. And a lot of them have depression and mental. Gen Z is like 21 and a younger. right now? Maybe four, 24. 24 and younger. Yeah. The suicide rates high. The depression rate is like astronomical. A lot of issue. Who was talking about this? Who was like the Gen Z? There's one woman who runs like a

research firm from Gen Z. So it was very much like, well, here's what the cool kids think. Like, I realized at that at that time, I'm like an old guy who's like, well, how do they use? Yeah, exactly. Old people talking about young people. Yeah. It never fails. Funny. I was like the youngest guy there. People had Gen Z children and they were talking about it. Right, right. Okay. Fair enough. I said that was one takeaway. What's the second thing. There was tons of like rich ballers there, like really wealthy. And a lot of them seem just horribly like down, depressed and not like that. If you're young or if you're rich, you're depressed. That's what I'm learning. Well, like, and this is something that's kind of like, I can't believe I'm saying this because everyone who's young hears this and no one believes it,

which is that money will not make you as happy as you think it will. Right. I saw this firsthand very clearly. What made you say this? So they're at this conference and they were just kind of recluse or what made you feel this or they were sharing like, look, I'm not feeling great. First of all, Yes, a lot of people, there was this one gathering. It was like a bunch of small sessions and people would complain about stuff. Like, say, here's what I'm struggling with. And you think that these people who have it all figured out, they definitely don't. Right.

People brought their families. And you see, like, the interactions that people have had with their husbands or wives or kids. And it's like, this guy on the surface appears like this baller. But he just has, he's going through the normal bullshit that every family man is going through. Right, right, right. Yeah, I have a friend who's, I don't know how wealthy is close to a billionaire. And he basically, he was talking about this, how he was feeling this way. And he's like, the problem is no one wants to hear about it.

unhappy billionaire. He's like, you will get zero listeners to that, like, talk. He's like, so you end up just sort of bottling it up and going on your way. What you're saying and what happened this past weekend, and I have a few friends that just sold your friends, too, just sold big companies. And I was with one of them. And we went to the ATM because he was like, wanted to have like a celebratory where he like printed out his receipt. Yeah. $200 million on the ATM receipt. Wild, a wild about. And then we went and had dinner at like a whole food, like a really $7. Yeah. Like we went to a grocery store. I think and just ate on the patio. And he was stressed out. He was like, what am I going to do with this?

I was like, dude, when are people going to like chill? There's a Jim Carrey quote where he goes, I wish everybody could be rich and famous so they would know that that's not the answer. Yeah, but it's depressing. This podcast is like all about building successful businesses called million dollar everything. I feel like half the conversations are like, yeah, money's not the thing. I think we need to reiterate that, which is that it's not. It's just like if you're training for an event or training for weightlifting, you are no different from a hundred. 150 pounds to 300 pounds in terms of like bench press. Right.

It's just the act of pursuing that is. Yeah, the act of pursuing is fulfilling in itself. And the other thing is when you have money, you have freedom. And but you don't need jobs of money. Yeah, you need less than you think. But that freedom is very powerful. Okay. So let's do it.

Ideas. What do we got? We promised the people some ideas talking about different trends, talking about different ideas that we found interesting. You want to go first or me? You. Okay. All right.

I have one. Have you heard of made bathrooms? No. Okay. These things called made renovations. All right. So I saw this ad on things. Facebook. And basically it was like a before and after. And before after is, in my opinion,

the best sales pitch I've ever seen, always, right? If you split screen on the left, it's like, this is you before. On the right, this is you after. And so the left and right and this one were, left was like a normal, ordinary, kind of crappy looking bathroom. And on the right was like this really slick looking bathroom. And it basically said, we will come renovate your bathroom for X dollars and it'll look exactly like this. I was like, this is interesting. Like they're, I've never seen somebody advertise a bathroom renovation on Facebook. So I clicked it. And basically what this company does is they have three stock designs and they all look great. And so there's like a super modern one. There's kind of an old school Victorian looking one. But again, very clean. There's like another

one that's like what's a company called made bad? Made. Yeah. And so all you do is you say, yeah, I want that bathroom. Like you don't have to hire a contractor, go through ideas with them, figure out what you want for the sink versus the toilet versus the walls. It's like, no, this is the bathroom. Do you want this in your house? Is this like a Silicon Valley thing or like a, I don't think that they're super Silicon Valley centric. They are available here, I saw. But Is this like a new startup? It is a startup, yes. It is a startup.

So it's a direct-to-consumer turnkey renovation. And so most people who do home renovations want kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly, they're starting with bathrooms will probably expand to kitchens. The second thing, they're taking all the thought out of it. I love that. This is a beautiful bathroom. Do you want this one? This one or this one.

We have three models. And then I thought, wow, because they only have three models, they're probably getting phenomenal prices, you know, economies of scale on buying the materials they need to do this. They're training contractors to, like, deliver the exact. the exact bathroom. And so they're probably training staff that's like just has to learn this one thing. And for the buyer, they're taking all the complexity of this kind of tangled project. Like, oh, do I want to do a home renovation right now? They're making it easy.

Elimination of choice. Okay. I think that should work for haircuts, men haircuts, like barbers. Yeah. When I go to the barber, I want to choose like I'm at subway. Be like, here's the 14. I'll take the number 12 large. Because everyone gets to, 80% of people get the same shit.

They say short of the sides, a little bit off the top. Right. Yeah, I don't even know why they ask me. I'm like, just look at it and just make it shorter of this. Okay, so what else could that work for? Where, like, you eliminate choices. I think interior design and renovation is like a great idea. Yeah, it's just so complicated. I think travel is another one, so turnkey vacations. So if you knew, not just the flight, the hotel, the whatever, people do this, but like flight hotel and activities, bundle it up, give you a price and be like, okay, you've heard that the Bahamas is great. Here's Bahamas if you want to just hit the buy button. And just email people every week being like, here's a Rub. buy button. Here's, you want to go to Venice. Here's the buy button. And I think eliminating the choice and the planning required set up a vacation. I think that's a cool concept. I'm going to think about that for a little while of what to start that where you eliminate choice. I mean, look, it goes both ways. Like the more products that company launches, the more money they make typically. But also a lot of times

when you just sell one or two or three things, it makes life better. And you can do really well. And you You can deliver on that service in a way that you can't, if you have this, like, larger variety of choice and customizability. And so it won't work for everything. But if it does work for one thing, and I think it'll work for something like bathrooms and kitchens, that's such a high ticket price thing, that could be a really big business. So I'm excited about this guys. Okay, something we covered on trends and I experienced this weekend because people were talking about it. Kava bars or. Yeah, what is Kava?

I've heard of this. Okay, I've done it. I lived in Australia for a little while. Fiji is like Australia's Mexico. So it's like we're like, it's like the Caribbean, like. Yeah, of course. And so I went to Fiji for two weeks and we hung out and we drank Kava. It's like a root.

It tastes like dirt and you mix it with water. And we would just sit around a circle with the folks who lived in the Fijians and we would drink it. And it gives you a mile high effect. It kind of felt a little bit like weed where you're like chill and people loved it. Immediately when I went home from Fiji, I wanted to buy some more and it was really hard to buy it. But what's the experience? You said, tastes a little bit like dirt. It tastes bad.

It's a drink. It's a communal thing. You sit around. Okay. So it's like hookah in a way. Are you passing it or something? It's like hookah, but it definitely gives you a small high. It's just like smoking weed with your friends.

Right. So on a scale of like, I don't know, is it like a cigarette? Is it less than weed? Is it like Molly? Less than weed. Less than Molly. More than a cigarette. Less than alcohol.

Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. Okay. We discover that trends. I think that's our, I don't think that's ever going to be huge, but it's definitely like a niche, popular thing that you could make a business out of. But hallucinogenics, man.

I met this guy who at the lobby, he was like, I just got back from 30 days in Amazon doing ayahuasca. Right. There's this idea that whatever is popular among elite Silicon Valley people, 15 years from now will be mainstream. Right. Because they're like the rich nerds who like have the time to like try stuff. Do this experimentation. I've never done a hallucinogenic. Right.

Me neither. I'm super into it though, like the idea of it. I want to explore it. What stops you from doing it? Because you're super into it. I'm not that into it. So it makes sense that I haven't done it. You're super into it.

Why haven't you tried? Because I don't know who to trust. But even your buddy does it, right? Yeah, but he's a weirdo. And I tell him, I don't know if I can trust you because you're extreme. So, like, if I could find, like, a normal person who could be like, yeah, this one is a little too much. Like if you could go into a clinic and you're like, great, under supervision in this cool environment, if it looked like a spa. Yeah.

Would you want that? Yeah, I would love that. And I went to a session where I met with a guy who was going to take me through the process and I got into an argument with him because he was talked to me about, I was like, asked him what he did for work. and he like was a former venture capitalist, but then he was talking about how capitalism was horrible. And I was like, well, that doesn't. So like, why are you charging me? And so anyway, we got in a fight over like values.

And so it kicked me out of the group. Okay. But I was almost on the verge of trying it. So I'm really interested in we discovered Kava or we talked about Kava and trends. I think the ketamine, crazy interesting. Right. I think these things are going to be much bigger. And there's a related trend of this like kin euphoric.

Have you heard of this? It's a basically there's a trend of. non-alcoholic... Oh, yeah. So they're non-alcoholic drinks, and what they are is... I don't know what chemicals they put in, but it's supposed to give you some kind of buzz without being alcohol. Yeah, we covered the non-alcoholic stuff as well.

So non-alcoholic beverages. I've drank non-alcoholic beverages now for about eight years. I drink non-alcoholic beer regularly. I like it. Like what, like a ginger beer type of thing? No. Odules was for the longest time, has been the only one. But over the past three years, Hineken has introduced some Japanese brands.

have come about. It's a little more popular in Japan. So the Japanese brands have come to America. Right. There's been a lot of new variety. And that's a growing trend that we actually have already written a report on. It's not alcoholic beverages. And interestingly, Gen Z is drinking significantly less than millennials. Yeah, exactly. I think I've seen that trend firsthand. And then when I saw you guys write about that, it made a lot of sense to me. But Heineken, the CEO of Heineken said that the fastest growing category is, they call it 0.0. That's the name of their brand. It is these 0.0 beers. Alcoholic beer.

Non-alcoholic beer, but they even have some that are non-alcohol and no calorie. And no drink. Yeah. You just do nothing. All right. I got another one. All right. So what if I told you that I could give you some IP, IP intellectual property like Star Wars, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, whatever? I could give you a globally famous IP.

Billions of people recognize this IP. And I could give it to you for free. And I can let you build a business around this IP at no charge. Would that be something you're interested? Yeah, of course. Okay, religion. So I sort of had this realization the other day, wanted to buy a gift for my niece, and I was like, what did I used to like when I was little?

I loved Where's Waldo books? And I was like, Where's Waldo? And I was just went down the rabbit hole of like, who the hell made that? What is this? How was this so popular? Blah, blah, blah. Sort of thought, what's the modern day Where's Waldo? Could somebody create a new Where's Waldo book, right?

So same premise, just finding pictures in a book because kids love books, but reading is tough, right? So this picture book is actually pretty cool because it's like active. You don't just like flip through the pages. Who owns Waldo that? Probably like, So I read about the guy who made it, I forgot his name,

but yeah, he, you know, whatever. A publisher owns it. Probably crushed it. And they crushed it. And I was like, what if you made the New Where's Waldo? I was like, well, part of the magic was that Waldo was this character

that just worked. And I was like, what if you did this with religion? Because the other thing my sister always wants is to introduce culture to her kids in a way that they like, that's playful, that's fun, that's interesting.

And so I was like, my family's like Hindu, right? So they have Hindu's like 100 different gods. Oh, this would be cool. You basically have this page with a bunch of different little, you know, drawings. Like stories about the gods.

Yeah, you're trying to find Honuman and you're trying to find this God. Can anyone own? Can anyone own? Anybody can use God's images, likenesses, and names because nobody owns the religious IP, hence my starter of what if you could use globally famous IP for free, for profits. So I believe that there's a set of businesses. The Where's Waldo One is just a goofy version of this, but the better version, the version I've thought about starting was to do calm, but for religion.

I don't know if we already talked about this, but like daily prayer. daily sermon, daily Bible passage, daily whatever. These apps are quite popular. And so if you use the calm model of audio, premium and freemium audio, and every day you could have five minutes of faith, where you would just listen to a prayer or a sermon from your religion. So I think this could be a really big business. I was very close to going and starting this one,

but it's not a founder fit for me. Like I don't even believe in religion. So if somebody out there wants to do this, I will help you do this. I put a lot of thought into how you would do this, how you would grow it. But I think religion generally as a free source of popular IP is like an untapped opportunity. So that's awesome.

Two comments. There's this set of Googlers, ex-Google people. They either, I think they emailed me after our podcast who were Christians. And they created like a Christian meditation app. Have you heard about this? A halo or something. Someone messaged me after our podcast. And they told me the numbers and it was astronomical.

Yeah. I've seen, I've seen their numbers. They are really good. It validates this idea. They're doing it for Christians. Somebody else can do it for Catholics. But is it just a Christian meditation thing? It's exactly what I just described.

It's a daily Christian meditation, which is basically like a prayer. And you hit the amen button when you're done. And you can share it. People love sharing religious shit on Facebook anyway. So it grows somewhat organically through that. So when I think of like business ideas, I like to think of from a distribution first. Yes. So how do you get users?

The advertising rates on Christian and without judgment, but let's just say conservative websites, stupidly low. Right, right. Engagement is stupidly high. Right. There is a lot of them. Because mainstream brands don't want to associate with some of these super popular conservative publication. Yeah. And the people who typically, because I've bought ads on like religious websites and rightlinging political websites. Where do you even go to do that? You just go direct or there's like an ad network for that? Direct. Yeah, you can do direct. But like, so like Brightbart. Yeah. They're marketing. I sent them to everyone's emails to understand how they're, what they're doing. Yeah. Brightbar has the most aggressive, like they'll let people buy their. their email list.

Right. They're the most aggressive and the most effective. Like they sent one email to me that said like from the desk of Nancy Pelosi. And it was like a letter written about and it said like, we're going to come for your guns. So you better donate now. Right. It's crazy. Yeah.

I was like, oh, this is going to kill it. So anyway. You can get distribution there. Oh, yeah. I think there's a lot of undervalue distribution. But a lot of like the young techies who build this stuff are typically on the opposite end of that. So they don't even think about that. But it's there.

Yeah, I like that. I think traditional ad buys, that's a smarter way to add buy. I think that works because, again, you're charging on the other side through people who pay for that $79 a year subscription. The other thing is, I think, through churches you could get distribution. So you give the church the ability to make their own group in this thing and let them distribute it. And then it's like, hey, for the people who are not coming to church on Sundays or who want

it Monday through Saturday, here's a way they can engage. And the market size for this is like 200 million people. Yeah. Only in America and only the Christian one, let alone the other religions. Right, exactly. So I would actually start with Islam for this, because there's a couple other, like, specific app features. There's like four billion Islamic people in the world.

And also, like, the type of people who start these companies will start with Christianity. So just start on the other side with like a super popular religion. Hindu is kind of cool. It is. Because you have more characters. But I think that, yeah, I don't know. For some reason, I don't feel like that's a starting point, but maybe. Although when it's like Mormons, like how do you go for the most devout, even if it's

a smaller number? of people, but like very active. I think Mormonism, though, that's the fastest growing religion in the world. Yeah, I know, but it was like a small base, but yeah, but that could be a good one to attach yourself to. Exactly. So, anyways, religion. Okay, what else? That's not really an idea, but there's something to talk about. So ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens. Are you familiar? Yeah, DoorDash, I just saw a photo, someone drove by a place in Palo Alto, and Doras had just opened up a kitchen. Yeah, so for those who don't know, a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen is basically a restaurant that doesn't have the sort of brick and mortar storefront where you can

come in, sit down, and get a meal. You can't go there in order. It only exists to make food that gets delivered on Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, and all these delivery apps that are out there now. And Travis Kalanick raised a, well, I don't know if he raised it. He'd probably use his own money, but he allocated something like $500 million to creating ghost kitchens or services for ghost kitchens. So the founder of Uber was like, hey, what's the next big thing? And he was like, these cloud kitchens. And so he, his new company is all about, he's basically going into a city. He's buying up this like real estate that nobody wants, but it's very centrally located. And it's kind of useless today, but what he's doing is converting into kitchens and letting

sort of food entrepreneurs come in, make food, create these little digital restaurant brands that only are optimized for delivery. So you would do things differently, right? So like you would want to make food that is, you know, you'd think delivery first. Like no french fries. Yeah, exactly. You'd make food that is going to travel well. You'd package it.

You'd put a lot of more money into packaging because you're not spending money in other areas. And you don't need to buy all the furniture for a restaurant. And you can make money by partnering with delivery companies to say, hey, you should actually pay us to be on your network because we bring this awesome set of delivery optimized food to you. So in fact, you should be paying us per order to be on your network. Are there any, we are great supply for your network. So you know who I originally saw was doing this was like a Chinese restaurant owned by a family and they were clearly just like hustlers and they're like, well, let's offer like hot dogs. Like I could tell because it was like the same. There was just a bunch

of ways that I'm like, oh, holy crap. That's the same maker behind it. They just, it's like, these are, this is a Chinese family and they're making Mexican food. Anyway, I saw them doing that, but what I'm curious about is, is there one brand that is like, well, like a, there isn't today yet, but there will be. There will be. Exactly. So it's still in that early phase where all the fundamentals are there. So what's changed? These delivery apps have spent, I don't know, probably upwards of a billion dollars paying to get installed on a bunch of people's phones. And they're training people that, hey, don't go out to restaurants, order in. And because ordering in is now super convenient, really easy to do on your phone. And so, anyways, they're training people.

and they're getting installed. That's your distribution. They need restaurants that are going to plug into their networks because they want to offer their customers better food. And so you have a good value proposition for them. You say, hey, wouldn't it be great if you had a central pickup point where you could pick up from all these different providers and we're centrally located in the city so you could provide really fast delivery. What if we optimize our packaging and our foods that's traveled really well? Wouldn't we be a good partner to work with over, you know, a restaurant who's doing delivery as like a second thing or a side thing? The next thing you do is you could test different concepts really quickly. So you could see, should I just make a hot dog

only brand or a mac and cheese only restaurant. And like, you try the brand. And if nobody's ordering from it, you just take it down and you just do new cuisine the next day. I had a hot dog stand and what I did was I would like, I don't know what people want. So I would have an idea, go and buy ingredients for only one day. Right. Exactly. And a lot of people who are great at making food are really bad at running business. And so they don't, they're not great at picking the right location for a restaurant, running the operations, managing the cash flow and all the stuff. A lot of them flock to food trucks for this reason because it's like a simpler kind of business in a box. I think this is even simpler. Yeah, and way more lucrative. Way more lucrative. Because you can be nationwide.

Exactly. Any concept that works in one city you want to take to other cities because someone who owns these cloud kitchens will say, great. You want to expand? I already have infrastructure in 12 different cities. Just either you staff up or franchise your concept to other people. I'm incredibly interested in this. If anyone is actually pursuing this, I would like to know about it. So there's a few people pursuing it that we know of, but I bet that there's a lot more, and I bet there's other angles to this that I'm not thinking about. So if anybody's really interested in this, I reach out because who's pursuing it? So Travis is like the kind of the main one that I know that's doing this. It's obvious. If that guy, if he is into this, it's like. Right. And he saw the Uber Eats numbers

early on. It was like, oh shit, this is going to be really big business. And so. And I just saw an interview with Tillman Fertita, you know, Tillman Fertita. And he was saying his restaurants are hurting a little bit because of the, how big delivery is. Exactly. And I think people love The convenience. He was like, I was shocked. People actually are ordering because he owns Morton's Steakhouse. He goes, people aren't coming into our restaurants as much, but we're still doing really well because they're buying it and bringing it home.

Right. So I actually ran a restaurant like this back in the day. This was my first startup. Sushi, right? Sushi restaurant. And we got famous because we were the restaurant without a restaurant where we were delivery only. But this was before Uber Eats, before Postmates.

They didn't exist. So we were trying to get people to come to our website to order. And that was just very hard. Whereas every night, me or my wife opens up Postmates pretty much. And we kind of scroll through and it's like, oh, do you want to order? or should we cook something. And so if our sushi restaurant had been on there, we would have been getting free customers.

What do you think is the best? Okay, so what food is good delivered? Sushi is actually pretty good delivered, because sushi is meant to be served room temperature. It's also packaged in a very, like, tight wrap, so it doesn't like sort of get loose and messy and stuff like that. But anything potato base is not. Have you ever known?

I know someone who worked at Uber Eats, and they had a phrase called Keep Your Eye on the Fry, and they had a whole team dedicated to McDonald's because of French fries. So the main one is obviously pizza, right? So pizza is the most delivered food. People love pizza. So you really want to work backwards from that. Like what do people order the most?

And so the question is like the dominoes pizza huts of today, like of tomorrow, I bet we'll get started here. Either those brands will start delivering and make this a big part of their business or somebody will create a new pizza brand optimized for this. Maybe they don't sell full pies. Maybe it's half or I don't know. You'd have to think through what would it, what should pizza be? You have to think back from scratch.

I think this is great. Pizza is the biggest delivery item. I'm going to post this in the group. I think it's actually bigger than I ever would imagine. We recently wrote about this. If you invested a dollar in Domino's IPO versus Google's IPO, you would have made like five times more. Yeah, I saw that chart. You posted that chart.

It was like Domino's is the line that's up into the right. And Google, Facebook, just because they were valued really high right off the bat or higher. Do you know what's causing that? Why is Domino's stock been going up so much? Are they just crushing it on marketing? And they do, they are quite innovative for the space. Like, they do like little cutesy things that is they're like, we're testing this new mobile oven. and so it's going to show up even hotter, which who knows if that works, but it makes you want to buy it.

Yeah, they're pretty forward-thinking. Yeah, I love it. I had the app, and their app is phenomenal. It's so easy to order. The tracker is amazing. Yeah, it is easy to order. It's coming, you know, five minutes from now. It just left the store.

It's going to be at your door in seven minutes. Yeah, they're great. So this is interesting to me. I'm incredibly interested in this. And this sounds kind of like a fun thing. You and I both owned food businesses. Right. I found that to be almost more rewarding than traditional Internet things.

I found it to be way harder than everything I've ever done. I don't know about rewarding. It made the least money of anything I've ever done. I learned the most, but it was also the hardest. Yeah. And I also feel like when we're in this tech bubble, it's very easy to, like, lose touch with, like, reality and how most people's job works, how sausage gets made, all that stuff. And there's, like, a different level of respect, appreciation and, like, understanding because, you know, working in service industry for a bit. I have a question for you.

So do you use any of these book summary apps or anything like that? I was thinking about that today. What were you thinking about? I think those are stupid. Okay, tell me why. What type of... Blinkist. Blinkist, right?

So, like... That's cool. I think they're cool companies, though, do really well. So what's stupid? You don't like it as a user? I'm not like that artistic of a guy, but sometimes I think, like, you got to read it to understand, like the new, like, you got to like really read the thing to get it. But the efficiency part of me is like, oh, that's kind of cool.

Right. So I have mixed feelings on it. But I do think I would invest my time into it or money into something like that because I think it can work. Yeah, because I'm thinking about doing this. for fonts. I started reading more because ever since our company got acquired, there's these hours of the night that used to be like grind mode that I'm like, well, I don't really need to put that into my job. I'll put that into this podcast. I'll put that into like reading and learning and things like that. So I'm reading these books that I'm like, if I could summarize this for people, would that be useful? And so the answer is definitely yes. There's something kind of like off about it, right? Like, why did you say it's stupid? Like, how do I make it less stupid? Well, I think there's a few things. The first thing is, so Otis Chandler, the founder of Goodread, spoke in. our event. Cool company. Really cool company. I think it's actually bigger than, they sold for $100 million. I think it's actually way bigger than that now. Yeah. And then Bookbub, you know Bookbub? No.

They advertise with us and they spend a lot of money with us and the results are really great. And what they've done is it's a huge company now or it's a startup. It's like basically an email for people who like Kindle books and they set out some free ones, some paid ones. And they're just an aggregator, cool stuff. And then some publishers will pay money to get their free book. Like when a new release happens they'll make it free for like a day just to get the get a bunch of ratings the book space I think growing like crazy anything book related right is I would put my name on for sure or want to be part of right that's one of the things we talked about with the whole gen z thing was that they're reading more than ever but it does feel weird I found myself whenever I read books particularly I've always want to look up the

characters significantly more and you told me about with what you're doing with blab you were trying to do the same thing where you wanted to create communities around TV shows I have found myself wanting to do that for books. I've not found a solution for that. Right, right, right. And you read what? You read, like, you read a lot of biographies, right? I read a ton of biographies. Do you read anything else? Yeah, I like to read fiction, like American classics. Okay. Catcher in the Rye, things like that. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something here because I'm reading these books and I'm like, oh, a good way for me to even just digest this is to try to like distill it down into the most interesting bits and be able to explain it. Like, if I can teach it, that means I've learned it. And so I'm going

to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to see if I can make something that I would want if I was the reader. Like I make it or break it though is the model that you choose because there's like the affiliate model, but you're going to be earning 4% on a $8 thing. That's silly. Oh, I'm not even thinking about the business right now. I just want to put out, put the content out there and see if people like it. There's this guy named Nat.

And I came across his blog. He's always popping up my Twitter feed. And he just started doing what you did where he summarized books. And then he just said, you can buy all my summaries for $100. And I think he's selling a ton of them. Okay, nice. I'll check that out. Yeah, there's something to this.

I don't know what it is. Okay. That's like a half-baked idea, but I'm going to do something there. Do you have anything else that you've been saying? Yeah. That's interesting. No, but follow-ups on... Follow-ups, yes. Okay, so last time we talked about Shopify.

Yes. I got a lot of criticism. People said the reason why WordPress is why you can build a theme businesses around WordPress and software stuff around WordPress is because WordPress makes up 35% of the Internet. They told me, and multiple people cited this, they go, Shopify only makes up 2% of the e-com, like, store market. and WooCommerce is actually Bigger. Way bigger. Which is crazy to me.

Which crazy to me. 100% crazy. Yeah, what is that? So I got a lot of criticism for that. But I know that's what the numbers say, but that doesn't sit right. Yeah, something seems off about that. The second thing is agencies. We talked about agencies.

So a friend of mine who has a $50 million a year agency hollered and he wants to. Ad agency, creative agency. Creative agency. Okay. Which sounds like a miserable thing to do. I think that sounds like a horrible company. So he reached out, he said. Yeah.

He wants to come and. fill us in on all the on the economics and what do you want to know so is it so here's why agencies are interesting to me one I think they're easy to start like it's like a straightforward thing someone needs a service and you say okay I can here's my portfolio I've been able to solve for this and they say okay we'll give you a shot we'll pay you money and then you just go out and find talented people who can execute on the work super straightforward it's actually interesting because if you start an agency you actually will discover there there's ways like I know a guy who has an agency that does 50 million in revenue it's quite profitable 20 million in

profit and with all the profit he invests in cool things that he's discovered with the agency. That's this guy or there's a different person? A different guy. That guy who I'm talking about who invests and stuff. That's called Meta Lab. His name called Tiny Capital. Oh yeah. You talked about that. But I'm talking about Brendan, my friend Brennan who has, he sold his company to an agency where he's now a partner and it's called Mechanism. Okay. It's a 300 person agency and it seems hard. It seems really hard. But I we'll get him on. We'll check it out. We'll see. Because it's like, there's like there's like a few things that everyone starts from the first getting going. The first thing is like, they're like, how do we create like roommate matching thing?

Right. Everyone has that idea and I've done it. To do list. Yeah, to do list. And then like a college, how do we sell our products to college kids? Like, like, okay, like all this is like, and then it's like, it's social media agency. Right. So, but. Common ideas. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to hear more about this agency stuff. The other thing that came to mind for me with dogs was, I was like, okay, given that 44% of people own a dog, what problem am I having as a dog owner, maybe some somebody could solve it. It's not a business I would want to start, but a product I want to buy is, I take my dog for a walk here in the city, city's filthy, dog comes back in, my wife demands that we wash the dogs pause. So what are you going to make socks? I don't know. It could be anything.

It could be socks. It could be a little jacuzzi that I put her feet in to like wash her feet real quick. No, it's obviously socks. Yeah, it's got to be some kind of easy thing because I'm so sick of this like mini bath that I have to give my dog twice a day. What happens when you Google dog socks? I haven't Google dog socks. I don't know. I would like to see what is on top. Yeah, and I just want something that's like, I don't want to put shoes on my dog. So, like, yeah, maybe more like socks or like even just like a really thin, like, you know, transparent little plastic thing that I could put on her feet just tear away when we're done. I don't know. I need something because I'm sick of washing my dog's paws.

So you just interviewed the guy who started Bark Box. Yeah, that's coming out in a couple weeks. Okay. Are there any stats that blew you away? He's doing $250 million in revenue. Shit, really? For year. I believe they're profitable.

Yeah. They raised 50-something million bucks and total lifetime. and they've been doing this for a while, so I think they're probably doing well. Probably, I think at that stage is more of a choice. It's like, do we have good ideas to go invest in or do we want to optimize their profits? Well, they own like a bunch of stuff. They do a bunch of different things. Yes. They do the, they do these subscription boxes. They do one-off selling stuff. I mean, they have a bunch of a little. Yeah, they're doing a bunch of things. The other part I've really liked from his story was they kind of invented the dog influencer on Instagram trend. So he was like, you know, it's kind of

unclear, but it was definitely early. I follow a ton of those. Before that was a thing. Yeah, I follow a of cute dogs that like are like my dog. My wife cried the other day when one of her dog influencers died. Yeah. I've had literally the same experience. It's crazy. And so they kind of, they basically started promoting all those dogs. They were like, hey, you're cute dog. We will promote you. And in turn, you promote our products. And they started this like affiliate thing early on. And it just became great content for people. That sounds like the greatest company to work at to be able to do that all day. That sounds awesome. Yeah. If you're like a pet lover, they're hiring. So anyway, so we'll see where that comes out. All right.

We should wrap up. Anything you want to leave people with? No. Okay. On that note, we're done. See ya.