My First Million - #26 - Shopify Spy Tool, Apartment Plants & Lucrative Content Sites

Episode Date: November 15, 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. We're hosting a meetup on the 21st November in San Francisco, check out details here: https://bit.ly/354TQ7H. This week these two discuss: the top businesses using Shopify (Check the ranking tool here: https://myip.ms/browse/sites/1/own/376714), millennial apartment plants, science fiction workout bikes, D2C hallucinogenics and businesses that you can start with $1000 this weekend that could turn into a $100M+ revenue biz.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Okay, we're here. This is a million dollar brainstorm. Sean here with Sam and special guest, Mike, who's not miced up, but he's in attendance. Hopefully he'll be a guest on the podcast soon. All right, let's jump in. What do you got for me? You told me some good ideas. I've got a few. So what it is is... The look on your face right now. Well, it's not an idea, but it's a way to find ideas. What he did was he went to the site and he found websites that all used the same IP address. Shopify has a same IP address. And this website coincidentally has a way to run. rank websites on an IP address. So basically what I'm saying is we entered in Shopify's

IP address and we found all of the other sites Shopify is doing. And it ranks them. So for example, we'll link to this in the notes. I was going to say, are you going to share the super spy tool or what? Well, it's like, it's like an IP address to even get to the site. So it's like the address is like 48, three, five, I mean, it's like a bunch of numbers. Dark web, straight to the dark web. Right. And so amongst like the top 100, most popular. popular Shopify's IP address. It's like all vape companies deals like a site like Daily Steels, which I'll talk about clothing, but not like single brand clothing, like outdoor voices, like stores, things that like they sell a lot of products and then makeup. And particularly,

I saw one that was on there and I'll tell you three that stood out. Seed Beauty. Have you for Seed Beauty? Never heard of it. Okay. I went down the rabbit hole and I researched a lot of these sites. Seed Beauty. What they do is they're the manufacturers of a store called Color Pop as well. I know Color Pop. As well as... They make the makeup that Kylie sells. Yes. They own 50 other brands.

Right. This is insane. If you go to YouTube and search for Color Pop, they have an office tour that they've made for like hiring. I watched this thing twice. It was amazing. It's like this crazy factory in L.A. The story is wild. It's like there's a brother and sister.

It was like a family business and seed beauty is the incubator within the family business. Right. And so they were first just manufacturing other people's makeup, other companies makeup for them shipping it and then they started making their own brands and now they white label for Jenner. What Lipp kid or Rihanna, but like, yeah, it's incredible. No, the Rihanna one I think is done with what's the big French luxury conglomerate. I forget what it is, but it's a publicly traded company.

You could actually read about their numbers there. But so anyway, seed beauty. Killing it on Shopify. And there's like 50 brands that they own. And that was surprised. The second one was Dailysteels.com. Have you heard of these? I think they're all scams.

These are, is a coupon site? What is this? Like penny bidding. Oh, penny auctions. Yeah. They're horrible. They're horrible for you. Quibids is the other one.

That's really popular. Okay. So if you do this hack that I just showed you, there's dozens of them in the top. And what you're saying is these are all been made by the same person or company because they're coming from the same IP. They're all, well, no, they're all on Shopify's IP. Oh, these are all Shopify. So they're all built on top of Shopify. But this is a business that I would never want to thought was actually as popular as it is.

I mean, this was as popular as, according to my rankings, it has as much track. Explain what this is for somebody who doesn't understand what you say pinning auction. I think it's a scam. What you do is you buy points to a website and then you use those points to bid on products. They start at super cheap. And the glam. Yeah. The hope is that you can buy an iPhone for like 85 points, which is like, I don't know, $2.

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it does happen. But most of the time what happens is it's not like eBay where the highest bidder pays the price. And if you bid second place, you keep your money. With this, every time you bid, your points go into the pool. So you bid four points to see if you can get the iPhone for four points. Well, you're not going to win and those four points are gone. And so whoever wins typically gets it for a lower amount of points than the retail price.

But all the bidders together have put in way more than the price of an iPhone. It's fucking genius. So it is genius. I think that it's all bullshit. And it's also built on Shopify, which I would never have thought. I wouldn't have thought that either. Okay. And the third one, which we wrote about in trends, my prediction was that this industry is

kind of like the mattress industry in 2010. It's about to change. and that is the sill the sill.com they sell plants particularly cute millennial plants like succulents condo plants apartment plants yeah like fancy ones right and we wrote about them on trends we did a report on the indoor plant industry months ago now the site the sill is one of the according to this thing one of the most popular is one of the most popular and what do you think of that when you guys put out the report that's pretty compelling to me if i didn't have a job and i wanted to make money that sounds awesome i would have joined that. The hard part is shipping it and making sure it arrives without being all screwed up,

but the margins are fat. I even went and found wholesaler of succulence. Right. Math works out wonderfully. Great. Love it. Okay. So that was a cool find that I wanted to go through. All right. The second one. Mind Bloom. Have you heard of Mind Bloom? No. I was talking to, I won't say his name, Adneson for permission. He told me he invested in it. Okay. So there's this seemed like it sounded with a J. Yeah. Okay. We got that much. All right. Yeah. Okay. So I have this like weird idea where I'm not like a Silicon Valley hype boy too much, but there's this idea that like what's popular among rich Silicon Valley people is going to be mainstream in 20 years. Right. There's another theory here that I think Chris Dixon wrote about, which is what the

engineers do on the weekend, everybody will do on the weekdays eventually. Yeah. So it's like what the nerds and sort of Silicon Valley people do as their hobbies, eventually go mainstream. So what I'm about to mention is not that cutting edge, but psychedelics. Okay. But mine bloom just launched. It was started by a guy who started a company that previously, I think, raised $100 million. It's called Mine Bloom. I think they launched within the past few months, and they raised money for it. And what it does is it connects you with a therapist in New York who will do, I don't know the exact drugs. I think it's ketamine and what's in mushrooms?

No idea. Whatever the mushrooms one is. Super cool. So they prescribe this to you or they? Yeah, it's legal in New York. And I actually spoke to a guy today in New Zealand. How do you pronounce that? Sillic.

That's what it is. Is that legal in New York? This is why we got Mike here, adding tons of. value right away. I think it's legal in New York, but this company connects you with a doctor or therapist who will give it to you. And I actually spoke to a guy today in New Zealand who we're going to fund a little bit. And he got one of the first grants in New Zealand to do LSD testing. Totally legal. You're going to fund the research side of it. Well, I want the hustle to write about him and then we'll allow people to give money to his grant. He needs 100 grand. I see. And I'm going to match it. Gotcha. Love it. So mine bloom. Okay, I like

mind bloom. Would you use it? Because you've talked in the past about you're interested in. I'm very interested in it. I'm not in the state of mind where I'm actually, I don't want to do LSD. For the people who are listening, I don't do any drugs or drink. I am not ready yet, but I love the idea of it. And Sam wrote a great post about when he gave a alcohol. Yeah. You should go look it up on the internet and read it. It's good. I try to sign up to do X-Sy therapy and I got in a fight with the therapist and she kicked me out of the group, like in the pre-meetings. So that's why I'm interested in this thing so they can introduce me to another therapist who will do it. Okay, gotcha. Okay, I have one for you that's, I just learned about last night. And I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's called

VASPR. Have you ever heard of VASPR? No, I like that name. So I think it's very new. VASPER. Sounds like a vaping thing. I'm going to show you this photo of it. It looks super lame. So just brace yourself. And I know it's a podcast so you can't see this. But describe what you're looking at. So it's a recumbent stationary bicycle that kind of looks like an elliptical with a vacuum behind. Yeah, it looks like a seated bike with like a jet ski butt on the back of it. So somebody, I know my aunt basically posted about this and was like, this thing is amazing. Best invention of the century and I was like, what is this? So I looked it up.

These are the claims that come with it. So it's an exercise machine. You do 21 minutes and apparently it feels like two hours of cardio. This is testimonials on the website are like Tony Robbins says this. The guy who started Bulletproof Coffee says this. They're like, this thing is magic. And it's a low intensity workout that apparently stimulates your muscles like a high intensity workout.

Oh, the Bulletproof coffee guy says that that's the greatest thing ever. Exactly. And it uses cooling and compression technology along with something else, blah, blah, blah. There's a whole science video. I don't know what it is, but I was like, I heard enough interesting things that was going to go try it. So I'm inviting you to come try it with me. They basically, they don't sell these machines to you.

They have them at like certain facilities, certain gym. Yeah, they have them all over LA. So USF has one in their research center. So we should go and check this thing like. Yeah. Well, we'll have to take photos along the way. It sounds too good to be true. And I like to go check those things out.

Yeah, the bulletproof coffee guy, Dave Asbury, I think his name is he says that he does that thing, I think every day or something. Yeah, I don't know. It sounds kind of magical. And there's not really a business idea. necessarily. It's just some cool shit. Something to be able to look out. Yeah, something to be on the lookout for. And in general, like the sort of like the promise of, hey, buy this device, it helps you get fit. That's a promise that never gets old. And it's, you know, from Jane Fonda's workout

videos to Bowflex to Abroller, P90X, you know, there's all these different sort of like, hey, this device, this is the one. This was the one that will get you to do it. And there's guys like me and you might be there as well who just like trying the newest gadgets. Yeah, I just like trying the new thing. Yeah. I like the problem. I like to judge it once I try it. And so anyways, I found this one good. What else you got? Okay. I've got two more categories, but I'll say the first category than you can go. Okay, someone posted in the trends group, what should I start this weekend? I need a project. I'm only want to spend less than $1,000. And I am biased, but I'm going to make an argument that

media right now, particularly websites and blogs, are shockingly undervalued. A lot of them are selling for one-time's revenue because some people don't think that they're great businesses. I think they're wonderful businesses, if done correctly. I'm going to you a few examples of them done correctly. Great. NerdWallet.com. For sure, they were above $100 million in revenue a few years ago. I think now they're probably at $200 million revenue. The business model is they write about personal finance stuff and they make, I don't have inside information, but I think it's $100 to $200 every time someone signs up for a credit card through their service. So I would put it a little bit

differently what they do, which is they don't just write about personal finance stuff. Yes, that's true. The way I would say it is they answer highly Googled questions that have valuable answers, right? So people say, which credit card do you buy? So they go work backwards. They work backwards from what are these questions and they build this authority around all the finance questions that people ask. Yeah, so their secret sauce is backlinks, and SEO. And they develop that over a long period of time, right? So that's the- Yeah, but they got to close to 100 million revenue with zero funding. Right. So it's a compelling argument. Okay, so I'm going to tell you actually four or five more big businesses in the exact same space. The pennyholder.com, that bootstrapped to about 40 million.

And what is that one? I've never been there. It's the same thing as NerdWallet, but for most I think Midwestern women. Okay. Bootstrap to 40, 50 million in revenue. Same model. Write content, monetize a handful of the pages with credit card and insurance offers. The third one, money supermarket. I bet you've never heard of that one, have you?

It's a British website. Very similar to NerdWallet. They're publicly traded. $500 million in revenue with something like $200 million a year in profit. And these are all the NerdWallet types, right? Writing about finance products linking to affiliate deals of credit cards and insurance and stuff like that. Yep.

And then Money Saving Expert. sold for $100 million recently and then the points guy which someone in our Facebook group said that they're at 50 million or so in revenue and so when you hear these I'm like all right those are great businesses can't deny that

do you think you can go start something or now is it too saturated too many back things? It's never too saturated like for example I wanted to bring up Notion which is this new software that's out that is basically like an Asana it's a glorified to do list for your company

yeah it's text edit it's like and that is one example of the idea that there's always room for better Sure. But when you're competing against these guys in the Google ranks, how would you compete with one of these? Or would you do it not in the financial services? So I would do it in a different industry. And so two industries that I am looking at right now, two different companies that are trying to conquer industries that I think are appealing. Or I'll actually say a few. The first the company is, well, the first industry, I've said this many times, software. So there's g2.com. I think they just changed at G2.com. Rumors are that that's a huge business. They just raised money at a $500 or $600 million valuation. The second one is software reviews.com. That sold along with captera.com for $200 million to Gardner. And then finally, J2 Global, J2 Global does the same thing as all these things. J2 Global, you've never even heard of that. They own Mashable.

They own PCMag.com and they own a few others. It's a publicly traded company with a $4 billion market cap. So I'm incredibly fascinated by these guys that are doing the exact same thing for nerd wallet, but for technology products, specifically digital technology products. I think that all the companies that I just named are completely. missing the mark on solving that problem. So I think that's an interesting one. Another interesting one is Meat Eater. Have you heard of me eater? I've heard of it, but I don't know much about it. Okay. They just raised 50 million. Is this the hunting and fishing one? For hunting and fishing. Right. So if I wanted to make

money, which I always do, but I have a job now and I'm busy. So really, if I had time. If I had time, I would copy some of these models, but I think that the tech niche sell us plenty of room. This guy, meat eater, I think his name Steve, the guy who runs it, prove that there's that for hunting. And I think that there are still plenty of spaces for something like the points guys, practically the same thing as Nerdwatt, but it's for like consultants who are interested in points. There's also people who do this with travel, because travel's another high value thing.

I forgot what Scott's cheap flights or something like that? That's one of those. What do you think, oil and gas? We got Mike here from the oil and gas industry. Who's with us owns an oil and gas company. So do you think a content site that's around either equipment or oil and gas or something around that and then linking off to buying products is a good way to go? I think that oil and gas products are going to be more at the corporate level,

so you wouldn't have an individual consumer going that route. But oil and gas news is one. I know that's a pretty profitable. And then like a brokerage house for deals. I'm a subscriber to oil and gas news. Okay. And so I'm going to give you a rebuttal. There's a company that's publicly traded that is $150 million a year business.

I don't know what their market cap is called Tech Target. And they do a thing where they talk about like really boring, huge company. Like if you're HP and you're going to buy something for 20,000 employees, they talk about those products. And what they do is if you click on those things, things, you enter their email, and then the company that can buy it from them. So to your point, if you're an oil and gas company that is going to sell something for a million dollars, yeah, sure, no one will buy that online, or maybe they won't, but you can sell information

to the lead and you would be willing to pay $10,000 for that information of a high quality lead. Right. So one interesting oil and gas company in that space, I think, is energy net, and they actually are a brokering house for deal. So they just rate the percentage of the deal fees and set up buyers sellers like eBay, but for oil and gas. Okay, so I rattled off a ton. Your turn. Those are good. I don't know if I have one.

I also have to run in two minutes. So we'll see what we can. Can I just bring up one thing real quick? Do it. Yeah. Okay, something I'm obsessed with, Notion. Okay, it's called Notion. I don't know the URL.

It's Notion. Notion. So I think. If you know Asana or. Evernote. Evernote. Evernote is the closest competitor. Evernote.

Okay. So it's a to do list, but it's used at an enterprise level. So businesses are using it. But it's like an Asana, but it's like Q, They raised recently $10 million at an $800 million evaluation, which is like when I started to heard that, I was like, that's stupid. But who knows, it's a really good ass product. I don't like it.

I use it, but I don't like it. It's cool. I don't know what's cool about it. You've got to show me. How on earth can a 25 person company get those numbers? So what happens is, so my friend Alex did clear bit. I'm trying to get him on the podcast too. He did the same thing where he just raised, I think, a $20 million round at like a $500

million or something around valuation. multiple hundreds of millions of dollars a lot. A different multiple than you usually get on these rounds. And the reason why is he didn't need to raise the money. So Notion did the same where Notion charges per seat for their product if you use it. How big do you think they are? Notion? Yeah. I don't know. I feel like they released some numbers. I haven't, I didn't look at it. They said they had a million users. I don't know if that means how many people are paying. I don't know what that means, but I do know this. Every company is a buyer of the office suite. And so a lot of people are trying to unbundle Microsoft office. They're going after PowerPoint,

Excel, Word. A lot of people think this is sort of like the new frontier. Also, business apps like this, workflow apps are like very in vogue right now. You have superhuman, which is email for business people. I don't know if you know superhuman that well, but pay 30 bucks a month. Pay 30 bucks a month if you want to have like better, faster email. And so all of these are very like hot right now. And so in general, I'm a sort of disbeliever and stuff that's hot. I think that VCs are just sort of flocking to these apps.

I don't think that notion is like super special. I'm against it, but it is interesting for sure. I'll give you that. Yeah. When I saw that number, I was like, how are these people going to make their money off this? Right. And I don't think they will. Mike doesn't think they will either. If you invest at that, you need to get a markup. So you're thinking, okay, it's 800. You're trying to get to $8 billion. That's the bet you're making.

Yeah. So I'm like, what the f. And so I saw that. And I went to this in my head. I'm like, well, the people who invest in my head. I'm like, well, this is not like every like financial crisis ever happens. Right. Right. You're like, well, like, Bernie Badoff. This guy is like, he's smart. Right. Smart people do dumb things all the time. Okay. This was a quick episode, Million Dollar Brands. storm anything you want to leave the people with any other questions we're going to do a meetup on thursday at the hostels office at 251 kernie if you're in the bay area or you have access to an airport get to the meetup yeah i put on the event bright 50 tickets available it's free we already have how do they find the link to this if i just posted it in the email and in the facebook group we have 50 people signed up already so i'll make it like more people great 20 minute podcast good

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