My First Million - 5 Internet Goldmines To Spot The Next $1B Trend | Steph Smith

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Episode 529: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Steph Smith about the 5 Internet goldmines she uses to spot $1b dollar trends before anyone else.  No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:30) Leveraging expiring patents (9:00) One chart sports (14:00) Mining Sci-Fi for IRL ideas (20:00) Spotting the mega trends (36:30) Building off of adjacent waves (47:30) Workshopping Steph's upcoming launch strategy — Links: • Internet Pipes - https://internetpipes.com/ • Blue Chew - https://bluechew.com/ • Sci-Fi Idea Bank - https://tinyurl.com/e3w5nfrd • Fastest growing sports (based on SFIA data) - https://recreateyou.com/blog/post/the-25-fastest-growing-sports-in-America • Newsletter on patent filings: https://patentdrop.substack.com/ • Patent expiry tracker: https://patentsexpiringtoday.com/ • Entering the 2024 public domain: https://publicdomainreview.org/features/entering-the-public-domain/2024/ • Patrick Collison's pollution page: https://patrickcollison.com/pollution • Our World in Data air pollution home base: https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution • Varda - https://www.varda.com/ • Gadget Flow - https://thegadgetflow.com/ • Dyson Zone - https://www.dyson.com/headphones/zone • Berkey Water Filter - https://www.usaberkeyfilters.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Free 2024 Goal-Setting Session - https://planfor2024.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke, and I put up my finger to my lips, and I said, I need to write this down because it was an incredible idea. The guy goes, you put his finger on his lips, and then my own lips, bash back and forth. And I was like, say no more. I need to, I don't want to lose this idea. Let me write this down. So today you're going to talk us through a bunch of research products that you use. A bunch of pipes, you call them, right? Yeah, internet pipes.

I called it research tools. You said that was dumb. Well, it just sounds boring. It's more accurate, but it's boring. I call them gold mines, which is basically some people just come back and show you a little piece of gold, maybe a jewelry. Steph shows you where the mine is. So you can just keep going back to the mine for more and more gold over time. Because I think people wonder, you know, if they see your tweets or read your blog post or hear you on our podcast, they're like, where does she come up with this stuff? How does she find this stuff? So today, you're going to tell us exactly that? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, the internet is such a special thing. And we often rely on something like Twitter to serve us the information of the day. But I feel like these tools are like, like you said, the gold nine. There's so much information that tells you exactly what people want or aggregates a bunch of opportunities for.

for you. So. Steph, tell me about this patent one. Because there's actually a handful of like really good examples with this one that I can, that I know of. So there's two parts. There's patent filings and patent expiries. So patent filings, I think there's probably some databases that do this, but the newsletter that I like to read is called patent drop. And they'll basically break down every newsletter, three or so patents from, again, big tech firms like Fang, but also companies like Nike,

By the way, I think Nike is the company with the most design patents, so it's up there. In any case, there's patent filing, so you can track what these big companies are betting on, what they think is interesting, that they want to retain some IP around. And then there's also expiries, which is interesting. I think we covered the company Hems before and how they basically leveraged a patent expiry to build their company or at least their first products. So there's a website called PatentsExpiringTay.com. which aggregates these.

And obviously it takes quite a bit of sifting because there's a lot of things like, okay, I don't care that some shin guard is expiring. But I think the combination of those two definitely can result in some business ideas. Have you guys heard of Blue Choo? Do you guys know what Blue Choo is? Blue Choo?

Yeah. So about three or four. I don't think they target you in ads, but they target us for sure. Yeah. Basically, about six weeks ago, I went to these guys' office, and I met the two founders, and one of the founders is a doctor, and the other one was a commodities trader.

And basically, they worked together, and they were like, what can we start? And they saw that the Viagra patent was going to expire in 2017. And so they were just plotting and plotting and plotting. And Hymns gets a lot of credit for doing this. But Bluichu, I think, is actually more interesting. So what Bluoo does is, I think they also own med.com. So it's basically a telehealth business where you call in and you say what your issue is. Their main thing is their pill.

I guess I don't know if they call it Bluetooth the name of the pill, but it's for erectile dysfunction, which I didn't realize it. It's like the customer base for that is like 150 or 200 million people in the world. And then it's projected by 2030 to be like four or 500 million. So it's a massive amount of people who have erectile dysfunction disorder. and they bootstrapped this company, and they didn't, I don't know how big they are, but I'm pretty sure they're between $100 and $200 million a year in sales, and they entirely bootstrap this company starting 2017,

and it was because of that patent that expired. And they built this business because of that. Yeah, that's an incredible example. Another kind of one-chart business. All you had to do is just show, here's the business plan. This is the expiry date of Viagra. We're going to make the, you know, the DDC generic version. And yeah, they just do it through Instagram ads, whatnot.

I think it's meds.com. So meds.com, I think, is the telehealth side. And then they have Bluetooth, which is like their product. I think it's like Seales, Viagra, and one other that are all expired now. Yeah, I went to their office and we were playing poker. And they had like a sample, like instead of having like breath mits, it was like a sample of like you could just reach it and take one. And I was like, I was like, my wife had a baby like two weeks ago.

I don't think I need this, but like, what happens to I take it? Here's a room, also, a padded room you could just go stand in to see the effects and nobody will look at you, then come back when you're done. I was like, I don't know if this is going to be in use anytime soon in my house. But I was like looking at some of their numbers, particularly on similar web, and they had like 2 million people a month coming to their website. And I was like doing back to the envelope math.

I was like, I'm pretty sure this is a massive, massive company. Hymns gets a ton of credit because they're publicly traded. And they were started in San Francisco. and they had all this press. I think this company is probably almost as big, and I'm pretty sure the two guys own most all of it. They haven't taken any financing. And so anyway, this patent thing is pretty wild.

Yeah, and I haven't gone through the stuff happening in 2024, but another quick callout is the public domain stuff, right? So every year, new things go into the public domain. We're hitting January soon, and so that's another thing to call out for folks. I think like a few years ago, wasn't it like Winnie the Pooh or something like that? Like a, was it Winnie the Pooh? Like a bunch of these like...

Yeah. And then Ryan Reynolds took advantage of that. He did, what was it in partnership with one of the phone companies? And he did Winnie the Scrooge as a commercial. That's pretty wild. That's pretty funny. By the way, another one of these trends that you called out a few years ago, which I thought was so stupid at the time.

And I've since spent probably $500 on this crap is you did. My wife loves this stuff. It was like minis. It was for some reason. Oh, like mini cooking sets and stuff? Have you seen this, Sean? Like, basically, it's mostly women, I think. Young women.

I agree. But it's so, I've spent, when she was pregnant, I would buy her, I bought her this, like, I bought like a bulk case of it. And then every week I would give her, like, a present. What is it? So it's, it sounds so dumb. The one that she liked was called mini brands, I think. And it's like any famous brand that you know of, like Coca-Cola, Kit Kat,

like any type of snack, but also like different products, like a, a shoebox. They make just miniature versions and you open up this small ball. It's like a baseball size thing and you open it up and inside there's like a variety of like eight different mini things and people just love

I guess looking at them. I don't even understand what the appeal is. But the children? It's weird. Step, it seems like someone who's into like this mini shit. By the way, this is Zuru. So this is that same guy, Nick Mowbray that we talked about on the podcast.

the toy mogul. By the way, he said he wants to come on. So we should hit him up and get him on. But it looks like they're the makers of this. Is it called mini brands? Yeah, mini brands. And it's really expensive. They're expensive.

Are they edible or are these fake? No. No. No. It's just like a, it looks like imagine a kit cap bar, but just like the size of a penny. That's all it is. It's just small. It's just mini and excellent. I have had this theory for a long time that anything mini just works. I remember in science class, there was like a mini beaker, and everybody used to fight over it.

And I was like, that holds less. And nobody wanted to hear me. I was like, no, but that holds less stuff. And but everybody wanted to have the tiny thing. And I was like, what's going on here? There is something to this, like either overly large, like kind of like the love sack, like either like an overly large thing or a completely tiny thing is just like one way to make a product more. There's a YouTube channel called Jenny's Mini Cooking Show.

That's the one I remember from years ago where I was like, people will just watch this person cook these quote meals for hamsters and they'll do the whole thing. They'll have like a tiny little knife and cut the pizza and the cake

and serve it on the tiny plate. People love this stuff. Yeah. And I can't, I make fun of these people but one time I ordered a birthday cake that was it was a Reese's peanut butter cup that was actually the size of a birthday cake.

So I I just like bigger things, but I understand, like, which sounds awesome, right? Like, you're not, you're going to buy that. Right now I should make like the cyber truck mini, basically, is like the thing I should do. I should make like the really tiny cyber truck that can just park in your garage. And that's it.

Yeah, it's weird, man. It's weird. We're freaks. Step, you want to do a few more? What do you guys want to do next? Let's do the sports one. Okay. So there's this website that aggregate.

it's a bunch of reports on sports, which obviously people love. Americans love sports. So they have like a state of pickleball report, state of the industry report. These cost money. What is the state of pickleball? Should we go into that? The burning question in all of our minds. What is the state of pickleball right now?

But what I did find was this article that basically aggregated some data from this. And it don't open it because I want you guys to guess what the fastest growing sports. are the 25 fastest growing sports according to this SFIA research, which is the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. What do you guys think were the top fastest growing sports in America? I already opened it and I could tell you I wouldn't have guessed one of them. I already opened it as well. So the game is over. But I would have said pickleball and I would have said that game paddle. Isn't there like another game that's just like pickleball, but it's for people that are, they want to be like, no, Pickaballs old.

This is the new new shit. Like, there's like two of them. That's what I would have guessed. It does seem like Pickleball's number one. But number two, I would have never guessed. Alpine touring. I don't even know what that really is. I think it's just like off, off country skiing.

And then I have never heard. What is winter fat biking? It's awesome is what it is. It's like. Sounds like something I need to research. So have these. fat tire bikes are really popular right now. So it's basically a bike

with just a really fat tire is what it is. And they are sick looking. You see them ride by and like, you know, it's just mountain bike riding, but the tire is particularly fat. That's all it is. You know, what do we say? We like big and small

things. It's just a normal bicycle with a fat tire that can like imagine a bicycle that could drive on a beach. Got it. But I guess I guess it's a sport. Number four, off course golf. Interesting. I don't even know what that is.

When I Googled it, I think it's just those machines. But I guess they've turned that into a competitive sport. And then number seven is trail running. I can definitely see that. That is, I get so many videos on my Instagram of trail running. Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke. And I put up my finger to my lips and I said, I need to write this down. because it was an incredible idea.

The guy goes, you put your finger on his lips. And then my own lips, back and forth. And I was like, say no more. I need to, I don't want to lose this idea. Let me write this down.

He said something. He goes, yeah, I do the suburban triathlon. And I go, what? And he goes, yeah, the suburban triathlon. You walk a half mile. to this bar, you drink two beers, and then you go play nine holes of golf. And I was like, what?

He's like, yeah, it's the suburban, I forgot he said suburban Ironman or the suburban triathlon. And I was like, this has legs. And I really think that if somebody created some kind of thing for, out of shape middle-aged guys to do, they'll do it. And I think if you make it, if you brand it almost like as the, the non-fit person triathlon and it's got to have

some version of eating and drinking being one of the legs you know a couple holes of golf as one of the other legs and then you can really pick whatever you want as the third but dude that's the next

next tough mutter. I think that could be a massive a massive trend that people start doing because it's kind of fun it's ironic and it's it might be pickleball as the third one actually

that's probably the right bet but this is this is definitely something that I think would appeal to people. What do you guys think? Yeah. Yeah. And that's beautiful branding. We're working backwards from the brand. We really don't even know actually what goes underneath. It's just the idea of the suburban drapland. That deserves you putting your finger on his lips and just kissing him. Just give him a little kiss. Like, I love you. That's beautiful. It's like you bike to the grocery store, you chug a beer. And you like, I don't know, run an errand.

And that's a suburban triathlon. And you got to do it on Saturday mornings. Steph, what's another one? Got to give a shout out to Pachy McCormick. He aggregated this. And he aggregated this from a site called Tech Novelgy, which is one of these sites where I'm just like, I can't believe someone created this.

I think his name is Bill Christensen or something like that, who basically took all of the sci-fi novels that have been written, or most of them, thousands. and he put them on a site called Technology. And what Paki did is he took this kind of very outdated HTML site that's hard to navigate and he put it

into this database. If you guys click the link, you'll see it and you'll see that there's this first page that's just just as sci-fi stats. So it basically takes all the ideas, so not just the books, but the ideas within these sci-fi novels,

and says, does it exist today? Were these ideas, in bits or atoms. And then it also breaks down things like for certain authors, let's say they had, like in some cases, like Asimov had, I think, like 99 ideas. How many of those ideas actually came to be? So you can kind of get a sense of like how grounded certain authors.

Examples. So I'm on the idea bank, row 194. It says in 1911, the author Hugo Guernsback predicted telemotor coasters. These were powered skates for personal transport. Wheelies, basically. Yeah. Or like that one viral video that went, the video that went, the video that were viral of people walking,

but with these like power skates that were making them go way faster. Yeah, exactly. So there's like, they basically break down thousands of ideas in this database. And then they say if it was created. And you can see in, yeah, the sci-fi idea bank tab in column, Jay, you can see what year it was first made. And then you can see things like Google, right? Or credit cards when they first appeared in these sci-fi novels.

So, for example, the credit card was first reference in 1888, but credit cards like Visa and MasterCard weren't actually created until the 1950s or live news in 1889. And then, you know, it took until the 1980s for 24-hour live news to actually be a thing. And it's kind of interesting because now you look at all these things like credit cards or live news and you think, of course, right? Of course that exists. That doesn't sound like sci-fi. But then you can extrapolate that and probably deduce that many of the things that sound like sci-fi today or even 50 years ago likely will follow that same fashion. And so I like going through this database because there are still many things that still fit in that category of not yet created but dreamt up. Yeah. So we can create electric rollerblades that just revolutionize the way we get hit by cars, right?

What are examples of things that you're interested in on this? Yeah, so I mean, some of these are certainly at the point where they're becoming real. But for example, in 1897, someone drummed up a non-alcoholic beverage similar to wine in 1897 as well, electric bicycles, which are now a reality. But I think becoming way, way, way cheaper and way more important. VAT grown meat in 1984, which is another thing coming online. But I think what's equally interesting is to consider some of the major tech trends like AI, like some of the stuff happening in biotech, some of the stuff happening in space. All of those trends kind of intersecting.

And you can ask the question whether some of the things that you see that again sound way more sci-fi than something like an electric bicycle may actually be a reality. So I think like an example of a company that maybe fits this bill is Varda, right? They're manufacturing drugs in space. which I think almost certainly a decade ago would have sounded crazy. What's Varda doing? They're manufacturing drugs in space. Why? Great question.

Yeah. The question I think we all have in our mind. What's wrong with doing it in like Massachusetts? Like, imagine Sam in the pitch meeting. They're like, okay, hear me out. Drugs in space. What about Massachusetts? So my understanding is that the way that some of these drugs are manufactured, the physics, when

you're on Earth due to gravity and some of the other forces that don't exist in space, results in you not being able to create certain chemical structures. And that impacts the way that drugs can be basically ingested or administered. And so there's that, I guess, immediate function of being able to create almost like drugs that exist today, but in different structures. but then there's the obvious future opportunity where you're then creating completely new compounds that could not be manufactured on Earth.

Did those guys raise a lot of funding? I believe so. That's wild. Yeah, that's beyond what I, that's beyond my IQ. That's just pretty amazing. There's like a list of ideas that were definitely started on like an ayahuasca trip

and this is one of them. Yeah. Well, whenever I see these lists, I just think of like, I'm not like, I'm not into like wizards and games of thrones and all that stuff. You know, what do I say? I say, I play sports. I don't read Harry Potter.

But I do like appreciate the fact that one woman just sat down and created this whole, this whole world to the point where there's like, like, we talk about quiddage. We're like, that's just like a part of like a relatively small part of this whole universe. This lady just sawed up. And it is actually kind of been crazy, crazy to actually see some. these predictions. It's in a weird way, it's inspiring to think that an imagination can do this. And I do actually feel pretty psyched up looking through this and being like, damn, I'm thinking way, way small and not into the future enough. So I understand that. I think it's actually pretty cool.

I just spotted in row 3,543 in 2003, smart wallpaper. So Sam, maybe that's coming your way. Next pod. Yeah, so I'll look less pale. All right, you want to do another one? Next, goldmine. So I love this one. Our World and Data. So people have maybe heard of this website. It's a website that tries to aggregate data that is a reflection of what's really happening in the world.

So it includes things like data on poverty. It includes really niche things. Like I found, I went through the website and there was a graph that related to the day of the year with peak cherry tree blossoms in Kyoto. Right. So when the cherry blossoms peak the most? So random, but they're collecting data on this. And I checked this website a few years ago,

and I want to say there was maybe 200 graphs on here. And if you go to their Rworldendata.org slash charts page, I want to say there's thousands of different data points now. And so I wanted to call out a few that I thought were interesting. But I guess what do you guys? think, isn't this crazy that there's so much data being collected? I just clicked on one. It's adjusted net savings per capita from 1970 to 2020. And you can see how much per capita a variety of countries are saving. It's pretty wild. Congo and Portugal, not saving a lot of money. Germany and France,

really great savers. So it's just like literally thousands of like different charts. You know, Sean talks about these like one chart businesses. I can't think of anything for this chart, but there's like many of these charts where you can see something and just spot interesting things. One of them is this population of the world distribution. So basically this is a chart that is looking at how many, of all the people in the world, how many are young right now, meaning under 15, how many are working age, 15 to 65, and how many are elderly, 65 plus. And the shocking thing about this chart, this is a one chart,

this is a one chart business right here, which is the elderly curve. goes from today, right, like kind of like the 2020, early 2020s, where it's under one billion. It's by far the lowest, you know, the smallest line to it's going to cross over the young population and be at, you know, by the end of where this has it projected, 2.5 billion. And so that's the biggest grower. The working, the working age one kind of flattens out. The young one kind of goes down and the elderly one has this huge spike. And so if you're building anything that's in the elder care,

that you're going to own for, let's say, 10, 20 years, you have this immense tailwind behind you, which is just that the population of people who fit, you know, the customer base is going to grow dramatically. We're going to go from under one billion people to over two and a half billion people that are in that market. And so that's a, it's, you know, a case to say, you know, if you go there, let's say, let's say it's like real estate. Like if you owned, you know, senior living facilities or something like that, you would be able to just benefit from the fact occupancy is going to go up over time in this way. Now, of course, technology may completely upend things and AI and all that,

but you can see these huge trends that are going to be very hard to reverse. So it's hard to imagine a scenario that we change the direction of these lines. It would take like a whole societal shift, population level shift, to change where these lines are going. Did you guys see the video of, it was Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, He was delivering the speech this week where he was like pleading and begging his people to start having sex and having babies because the population is just dwindling. And he's literally crying. Like you see tears coming down his face, crying.

And the rest of the audience is crying. And he's begging them. Please have babies. It's really, it was really fascinating. And it starts like this. Yeah. Yeah. Just crying in front of a man crying in front of you, begging you to have children.

Just light some candles and put on some. some R. Kelly and it'll get it done. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. I guess I didn't realize it's funny. I'm looking at this chart and seeing his video. I didn't realize how big of a problem it is. But there's so many here. Which ones stick out to you, Steph?

So I just linked another one that I think, again, is this like one chart business. This one's hard to get involved with, but I think it's the lithium production. If you pull that up, I just linked it in the documents. And you can see that lithium production, which obviously is the core ingredient in many of our batteries is concentrated in just a few countries. A lot of it's in China.

A lot of it's in a few countries in South America. That's another example of just as you're browsing through a bunch of these charts. I think that one jumps out. But the one I wanted to dive into in depth is air pollution. So if you click the stat in here in our document that says air pollution is one of the world's leading risk factors for death, which maybe is obvious to some people. But to me, when I think about it's like, what are the key causes of death? What am I afraid of? Air pollution is not at the top of that list. However, I also stumbled upon Patrick Collison's pollution page. He's got a bunch of cool pages

on his website. He's got a page with just a bunch of questions. One of them's on pollution. And he says that the World Bank indicates that 3.7 billion people, so about half the world's population are exposed to this metric of PM 2.5 that has to do with like the size of particles in the air. They're exposed to around five times the unit of measure that he correlates with a bunch of things, which include lower GDP, it includes stock market returns being lower, people making worse decisions like chess players making mistakes, politicians using less less complex speech. So those are just, you know, some fun facts. But I think what's really important is obviously the health side of things. And there's another stat that I'll just quickly share,

which is from a newsletter called Charter, which says that India's capital, this was recently, breached the 450 mark on the air quality index over four times a healthy level. And basically, they're in this hazardous zone, which is akin to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes, day. And obviously, that is an outlier. But I wanted to call this out because I think air quality is something that is a problem in a lot of places, clearly, some more than others. But it's something that I think people are going to be caring about a lot more. And maybe one product that came out in the last year or so that's indicative of that that a lot of people made fun of was the Dyson mask headphones. So I'll stop there. What were those? Yeah, I never saw those.

They are headphones that have a basically a mask, an air purifier attached to them. Wow. And they're expensive. They're $1,000, I think, right? They are $700 from what I can see. And what this came out and people just made fun of them? Well, if you Google images, it's like a white guy in like the New York subway wearing it.

You know what I mean? Like it's a little off on, because you're talking about India and a few other countries. not maybe the New York subway. So it's kind of like a misleading ad they have. But that's pretty fascinating. Are these taking off? No, I think they're in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them.

However, the reason I'm calling this out is because I think there is this understanding that, you know, it's just a new deli. It's not, you know, anywhere close to home. But I think, have you guys ever used like an air quality index measure in your home or like a CO2 monitor? Yeah, I have multiple times. And I bought like these air purifier things that also measure the air quality in my house. And I have them. And it's like shocking whenever it'll like, it basically turns red. And it's like, oh, God, there's something going on. We need to air this place out or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, air quality changes over time. And I don't know. I've been noticing more even in San Francisco a few days where people are like, oh, I'm wearing a mask of work. Not because of COVID, but because like, oh gosh, have you checked the air quality? And a lot of people aren't doing. this still today, but I think that'll change. And I think if you use some of these, like the CO2 monitor, for example, you literally, like, if you go to bed with your door closed and you wake up and you check that thing, it is wild how high it is. And, you know, all you need to do is open a window

or, you know, circulate the air in your home. But I think as the stuff, I guess, is people are more educated on it. I think some of these devices like the air quality monitors are going to take off. And you can see some of this data in Jungle Scout as well of just like the kinds of products that people are buying. Do you see, what did you see a thing in Jungle Scout that stood out? Any product that's in normal? Okay, so there's one product which has to do with an AC furnace and an air filter. But guess how much this thing sells every single month?

What is it? It's an AC furnace air filter and an air quality monitor. And so what does that mean? Literally like the filter I put on the vents of my like, I've got like eight vents around my home and I put these like filters there. Is that what you're referring to? Like those like the cloth almost filters? You, it's a filter you would put on your, on your furnace.

Got it. Okay. All right. So what I'm looking at here is, yeah, like the kind of standard air vent filters that you have to swap out every whatever six months or so. But also it's a smart one. So it has like a monitor associated with it that has an app. This thing costs 250 bucks.

Yeah, I have no idea. but I, you know, sounds like it might be a little high. So tell us, what does Jungle Scout tell us for the revenue? So I'm seeing four entries in Jungle Scout and they are 17 million, 12 million, 8 million and 8 million. So what is that all total? That's like over $40 million per month. This is what Jungle Scout is saying.

So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but they tend to be pretty accurate. And so that's an example of, I think, as people, again, like, try to understand the air quality around them. I think there's a, there's a growing business here. That is fascinating. I want to point out another thing.

So this chart that you have of like causes of death. So the top, let's see, risk factors, I think I might have chosen the United States here. But in the United States, I believe the top ones are smoking, number one, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity.

So I've a crazy story to tell you. So I can't say his name because he asked me not to worry. He said he prefers to stay under the radar. But I have a friend who is an investor and he's a very different kind of investors. So what you see on Twitter often is people who are investors, they like to be loud about what they do. They'll just kind of spray and pray. They're doing a lot of deals. They love to be angels in 50 things, putting 20K checks.

My friend is very different. He says that in every year, there's like one. thing that matters, maybe two. And his old job is to just find the one or two things that matter. And so I've known him for maybe 10 years now. And at one time, he's like, he's like, Bitcoin. It's Bitcoin right now. And I was like, Bitcoin, really?

Like, sure? And this is like, you know, let's say, I don't know, 2013, 2014, 2014, 2015, somewhere there. He's like, it's Bitcoin. And then he was the one who was like, only fans. I'm all in on only fans. And I was like, only fans. What is that? This is before any, before any of the revenue numbers had come out about only fans.

He's like, I think, and I was at Twitch at the time, and he's like, only fans is bigger than Twitch. It's going to be bigger than Twitch. And I was like, no, dude, Twitch is like one of the biggest internet sites on earth. And he's like, trust me, it's going to be bigger. And he, and he's like, called it basically each year. He doesn't necessarily always get to invest, but he's trying to identify what is the thing. Did he get in on those? Yeah.

So like for a couple of these, yeah, he's got the ones I've mentioned so far. He did. So then he texts me the other day and he goes, uh, GLP. greater than GPT. So this is like, I talked to him maybe, I don't know, nine months or a year ago.

And he was like, yeah, I think this Ozempic stuff is the thing for the year. And I was like, really? Like, isn't it AI? He's like,

no, I think this, I think GLP is bigger than GPT. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, I'm trying to figure out the right way

to invest in this. Because they're all like, basically, OZempic and the makers of these are all public stock. So he's like, I can buy that, but the upside's not exactly

there. So I'm trying to figure out what's the move. And he told me, he's like, there was one company I invested in several years ago that might actually be a beneficial beneficiary of it. So yesterday, he sends me an article. Carmo, this pharmaceutical company, got bought for $3 billion yesterday. And they're a maker of GLP drugs. He was an early investor in it. He invested in it like seven years ago or something. And I was like, dude, how did you get in on this? He's like, well, you know, at the time, this all wasn't clear. I can't say that I, you know, definitely didn't know about that. But it was, these guys were drug makers that were attacking obesity drugs in a different way. And, you know, just looking at the charts about what kills everybody, you know,

like obesity is a massive, massive problem. There's not that many interesting bets of who's attacking obesity in a different way. These guys were one of them and I like their team and whatnot. So I invested early on. And I was like, geez, man, like just to have like a $3 billion exit out of nowhere, kind of amazing. What do you think is return on that was? I don't want to say, but he got in fairly early and three billions of big numbers. I think he did extremely well on that one.

But what I will say is that he kind of looks at these like megatrends. And this is kind of what you're showing here, Steph, is that if you understand how big the wave is, then it kind of simplifies life. You can ignore all small waves. If you know what the mega,

you know, the big tidal waves are. And you just figure out, okay, what's the best way to surf this? And even if you don't figure out the best way, even the fourth best way to surf a megatrend is going to work in your favor. And I've heard this now from a few investors, but also Mark Zuckerberg said this a while back. I remember when we were working on some app that was like a messaging app, like text messaging app. And this was maybe 2015 or something. And it seemed like text messaging was the big thing.

And Zuck came out and he goes, there's only a few megatrends. Mobile was the last one. And then the new one is video. He goes, video is a mega trend. Everything is moving to video. People are kind of communicate through video. They're watching more and more video, short video, long video, medium-sized video, scripted videos, you see videos.

It's all going to video. And I had never heard anyone say this word megatrend. And when Zuck said that, I started to pay attention. And we actually ended up pivoting our company into video streaming, live video. We were like, oh, we'll go for live video. And that's the company that got bought when we got acquired by Twitch is because we were just partially in the right space, like live video streaming. There weren't that many people working on it in an interesting way,

but live video kept growing, kept growing, kept growing at this really fast rate. And so it was smart to get out of the text game and get on the right megatrend. Yeah. You know, something I'll mention about the air quality stuff that's related to what you said there, Sean, is I feel like one missing gap with air quality readings and devices and all that is it's not obvious. As in I feel like most people would be surprised to be like, oh my gosh, I inhale all this stuff and it has these adverse effects and it's, you know, it ranks here on, you know, the likelihood of death,

but it's not obvious. It's not in your face, like, let's say, like the GLP ones, people see themselves every day, and they're constantly trying to improve their image and how other people interpret them. So I think maybe one thing that, if someone was going to go figure this out, you guys have talked about the water filters.

People go into your home. Yeah, it's going to bring that up. They say, like, did you know? Like, you're drinking like this much of, like, basically like rocks and other sediment and lead in your water, can you believe it? And they show you. And so I feel like there's an element of that

where it's going to take a while for people to really care about the air quality stuff, but there may be some middle ground where some company is able to effectively give people that aha. Yeah, I would put it differently. I don't think it's going to take a while. I think it's going to take a marketer for people to care. It's just going to take a marketer in a product design that puts it in your face and that educates you about this and kind of scares you about it.

but then says, don't worry, there's a solution. And that's how a lot of things get done is, you know, a great marketer or product designer figures out the way to put it in your face. Did you guys remember what Rob Deerick said? So, Rob Deerick came on, and he didn't spend too much time talking about this, but he said he bought a good chunk of a company that is doing water filters for showers. And I've got a bunch of friends that are like health freaks. So Justin Maers is one of them where he's a health freak and he's a great entrepreneur.

and he was like, man, I installed this really expensive, basically Berkeley filter, which is that big metal, it's like those metal jugs that you see in people's homes. And he's like, I wanted to install one for my whole home because I wanted my shower water to also be completely filtered. And I went through this whole ordeal to do this. And then Rob Deerick invested in this company that is basically making a shower head that is a filter. So it's ideally simplifying that entire process. He talked about that on this podcast, but he didn't spend too much time talking about it.

And I went and researched a bit of it. I think that is going to be a pretty big company. And I think there's going to be a whole... I imagine it's going to be like a boxed mattress trend where no one has them. And then suddenly many people have them. And there's tons and tons of competition. Because I don't think that's quite that hard of a company to create.

I don't know what the mode is entirely. But I imagine there's going to be a whole bunch of people in that space. And so I'm pretty much on board with what he said. and I think you have an interesting insight particularly with the AC Vets. That's another product that literally everyone has in their home. You have to replace it two or three times a year. And it's a really, really easy Instagram ad to make.

All right. Let's go to the next one. What else you got? All right. Next one in here is gadget flow. So this is just an interesting site that aggregates gadgets, friending gadgets. I want to call it two things here. The first is if you look at the most popular gadgets. You might say, well, what's the opportunity here, right? Like, I'm not going to create a

drone like DJI. I'm not going to create the next AR VR device. Apple's doing that. Meta's doing that. Like, there's no opportunity. I just wanted to call out that every time there's a new device that ends up penetrating a lot of people's homes or wallets, there's almost always an opportunity for accessories. So a good example that we covered years ago, Sam, on trends, was AirPods. And you have got a crazy stat on that. You've got a crazy AirPods stat. This was forever ago.

I wonder what it is now. But back then it was like early on in the AirPods journey. And it was like AirPods, if it was a standalone company, would be in the Fortune 50 or something like that. And it was like, whoa, whoa. I think your stat was like AirPods make more revenue than like Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb combined. Yeah, I think Twitter was that too. It was, yeah. And that was again, that was in 20, I want to say 2019 or 2020.

And so now there's some crazy stats with AirPods, which is just like 70% of all U.S. teens have AirPods. Like that is like true penetration. And so early on in that trend, it's like, okay, there's like cases. There's trying to remember like key chains, really simple stuff. But I think what is worth just understanding or what you can take away from this gadget flow website is like, okay, what are the newest devices that are not. not going to have the scale of like hundreds or thousands of people using them, but millions or hundreds of millions. And what are the adjacent accessories or products that I can create? So how do you use gadget flow?

So gadget flow is not as much of like, you know, a searchable database like something like Jungle Scout, but it's more so just what I would do if I came to this page is first, I would look at the drop-down of most popular, right? So that's where you're going to see some of those big devices. And then the other takeaway is some of the drop-down categories, I think. So the one that caught my eye was pet accessories. So remember, GadgetFlow is like all tech devices. And so if you go to pet accessories, there's a bunch of different things. I guess you both have owned dogs.

I've never owned a dog, but I wonder if you're familiar with any of these devices. And in particular, there was one that I noticed. Have you guys heard of Fluent Pet? No, what's that? What is it? It is this really interesting trend of these buttons. Fluent Pet is the particular brand that I think is going pretty viral because of one account. This dog called I Am Bunny.

This account has, I think, a million followers on Instagram. And it's basically these buttons where you can, I don't know how, like how well this works for all dogs. You can kind of teach them to communicate with you by pushing these buttons to indicate what they want. And I've seen these. And it's, and it is actually really cool. So the way it looks is it looks like a, so it looks like a, imagine like a twister pad. And each color has a button on it. And the one button means bathroom.

One button means food. One button means other thing. And you could train your dog to click a button to do what, to tell you what they want. It's actually really cool. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I've seen these. We trained our dog how to do that where I could tell what he wanted based off of a handful of activities that we would teach him how to do. This is actually really cool.

Yeah. My dog is way too dumb for this, but this is awesome. Yesterday, I took my dog out to, I took my kids to gymnastics and we brought the dog. And so all these kids love to come pet the dog. And this kid comes up, probably like, I don't know, seven years old or something. he goes, oh, your dog's so cute. And I was like, thank you. I was like, you want a pet?

He's like, yeah. He goes, what's her name? And I go, yeah, her name's Bunsley. He goes, oh, why didn't you give her a better name? Like Rosalina. And I was like, okay, maybe I, I was like, I didn't know how to respond. I was like, man, I just got owned by this little kid. Yeah.

What he was supposed to say to that? Why didn't you give her a better name like Rosalina? Yeah, it's like, oh my God. What if I was, it's like I got a jab in the nose. Sean, did you name the dog? I did name the dog, yes. What was the answer? I just thought it was a very regal sounding name.

I think your definition of regal and everyone else's definition is a little bit different. Like a butler. I don't know. Like, oh, Bunsley. Steph, are you just, what are you doing all day? Are you just clicking through all these? I mean, you probably have 100 or 50 different links here. Are you just clicking through this stuff all day?

My tabs are open right now. I want to say 35. So are you going to go through those or just a hoarder? There's an order. There's like the Jungle Scout tabs grouped together, the like similar web tabs group together. I don't know. I mean, I think so I will spend time every so often

just like going through these websites and like scouring for ideas. But I think there are a few newsletters and things that I pay attention to that kind of surface ideas that I then, if I find them interesting, will go and check them in similar web or Jungle Scout or whatever. And I know you're at A16Z now, and I presume you're happy. But inevitably, one day, you're going to go and you're going to start a company. You have it in you.

I think you're going to do that. What do you think it will be? Which category? Because you've seen all this data. You look at all this data. What's going to interest you whenever you do it? Well, I don't want to share the ideas that I actually want to pursue soon because... Which category?

you could say games, or I like the idea of, you know, people we've talked about before, someone, if you guys remember Neil Agarwal, Neil. Fun. Yeah, great, great website. You know, part of me, we talk about these big ideas, like AI and biotech, and it's all very interesting. And, you know, someone, please go become the air quality marketer that we all need. But part of me just wants to create things that I wish I saw on the internet, or I wish existed on the internet

that aggregates some of these ideas or gets people to learn things in ways that they never thought of before. And so I kind of just want to be, this is too silly of a term for this, but like an artist, like an internet artist, if that makes sense. Are you, and you work at an investor now,

is this something that you'd raise money for or you'd want to do all on your own? I'd do it on my own. You wouldn't raise money. I don't think it's the kind of, it's not a VC. Internet artist? Who's going to,

They're going to be like, do they have those in Massachusetts? Like, All right, well, I'm just curious. Like Peter Levels is like the internet, like the banksy of internet art right now, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, he's kind of one of those guys. Yeah, exactly. And I think you will do that.

I'm eager to see when you finally do do it. I think you're going to do really well in it. Well, they have her trapped because I saw her do something yesterday that made me just shake my head. She tweeted out, who's got the best company swag in the world? Oh, no, don't sell me out like that, Sean. A backpack and like a coozy and like a water bottle that all set A16Z on it. And no doubt, they were beautiful products. It's great to get free stuff.

But that's how they get you, Steph. I was like, no, they're wrapping their tentacles around you. You know, what's the two most addictive things of the world heroin and a monthly salary? Well, third is free swag. Yeah, they don't even, you don't even have golden handcuffs. You have a black umbrella. That's what they did for you. The internet artists that I want to follow that I admire.

does not fall into the traps of company swag. They reject company swag. They reject company swag. When I saw you post that, I was like, oh, no, she's in too deep. It's like an inception. We need to wake her up. She's so far, she's in level three of inception, and we got to snap her out of this. Well, I mean, I am human.

I am convinced by free stuff. It looks like they got you with a book bag, an umbrella, and a poncho. That's what. That's what it took. Yeah, so for all the people who have previous things, tried to coach me. That's all you need. Just send me a backpack and a poncho. Well, I'm eager to see you start a company. Where do you want to go from here, Sean? Yeah, I think we will. Let's wrap it up. But Steph, where can people get more of like this type of stuff specifically?

So like you have this very unique method to your madness that you, you know, you know these nooks and crannies. You're like those people where you go to a city and you're like, I really wish I just knew kind of like what tourist traps to a void, what good places to go, what's the best place to eat. Oh, she knows this hole in the wall where you can enter through the chef's kitchen and blah, blah, blah. You're like that for the internet. So how can people get more of that? Yeah. So like you said, it's my seventh time on my first million, which is kind of crazy. And ever since the first few, where I'd come with these docs and you guys would be very nice and hype up the dock and say, oh my gosh, so crazy. There's so much in phone here. I constantly get people reaching out asking for those docs and

an aggregation of all the websites that I visit and how to use them and how to internet sleuth. Or I like the term to use the internet pipes. So I'm putting together something. I don't know what to call it. Maybe you guys can help me with it that aggregates these internet pipes and shows people how to use them. So I think the only thing I've done is aggregate them and then buy the domain internet pipes. But I think by the time this episode goes live, I'll probably have some sort of like pre-sale up on that page if people are. are you going to charge for it? Okay. If you guys have a minute, I want, I want your opinion,

because I think I'm going to do something wrong here. Don't just don't use the C word. You can't say course. You have to call it something else. Like a, I don't know, you got to use chat, GBT, but something involving the word research, I'd imagine. There was this one guy that used to really, he had a lot of knowledge. He read a lot of books. He had a Lamborghini in his garage, and he too had a course. So maybe you can take his blueprint. He had a good one. I mean, so I don't know what I'm going to call it. I don't like the idea. of it being a course because I don't, I want it to just be like a resource that people go to and it's not like a, not like a teachable course or something like that. But what do I charge

for something like that? I, when I did my book, I did this like tiered pricing scheme where it started at $10 and then it went up for every like 30 or 50 sales. But I have no, I feel like I'm going to end up charging too little. What was that called? It was called doing content right. So doing content right. Sean, tell me what you would have done in this situation. Steph worked at my company. Yeah, and she was talented. She worked at my company while she was doing this. And I remember Steph, someone came to me and they're like,

do you care that Steph is doing this in launching this content book? And I was like, no, why should I care? Would you have cared, Sean? And I think, Seth, you made, I don't know, you could say what you made, but you made great money. You maybe made more than that than we were paid. Yeah. Did you make more doing the book than I paid you?

Maybe in the first year. And Sean, what would you have said if your employee was doing this? Would you have been pro or anti? Yeah, I would have been pro. I mean, it's fine. I have no problem with that. I would have had a conversation just to be like, cool, where are we going with this? Like, what's the, where does this live in your life?

Is this like fun side project? Is this what you actually want to go do? That maybe I can help you go do that and more. Like, I just kind of want to know where that lives. And I just, you know, obviously, you know, for you, Steph was like a star performer. so, you know, stars get like more rope to go do things. If you're like, if you are doing a mediocre job and then you got the side hustle, that's the final straw for me, right?

Like, then you're not putting your energy kind of towards actually getting a good outcome. But Steph was crushing it. So, you know, so I don't think we were pretty encouraging of people to do stuff unless they were screwing up. I don't know if we ever lost an employee because of their side thing. But I think like that was pre-Twitter getting popular. like it is, I think in the future, I maybe wouldn't have encouraged it. And it's kind of effed up, but I don't know if I would have encouraged it, but I did encourage it back then.

Well, that's what I mean by I want to know where it lives in your life, meaning if this is kind of what you really want to do, then let's just be honest about it. Like, let's just have the honest conversation and we can figure out like what's the right pathway forward. And if you're like, I just want to make a little bit of extra money, we could talk about like, hey, if you just did XYZ here, you can make that hit. you don't have to start a separate business, right? If that's the motivation, if you're just like, oh, yeah, I just use this for serendipity and networking. And I just kind of like to put stuff out there at nights and weekends. Like, this is my hobby.

Like that's what I told people when I was doing things. I would say, you know, business is my hobby. So like, you know, for you when you log off work, you might go to CrossFit or you might go play golf. Like, what I do is I read, I write, I make things. That's what I like to do on the internet. And so, you know, this is just me doing that hobby. You know, you do Taekwondo or whatever you do.

And I think there's just some people that are like that. You got to let them spread their wing. I mean, I think also to your point, Sean, it depends. Is this like an ongoing thing forever? You're going to be doing a course every quarter and it's going to take up all your time. I intentionally with this project partially because I didn't want it to last forever, but partially also because it's just my psychology to get something done and out there was like, I think I compressed it until like a six week thing.

And I was like, this is all, this is the only time I'm going to allocate to this. And I feel like for this new project that I'm launching to, it's kind of the same thing where it's like, I don't want to be like doing a course forever and people checking in with me and have this. I just have this like little burst of like creativity. I need to get something out there to exist and then that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Your question was what would you, what should you charge for it? I don't think this is going to make a ton of money because the who's the type of person that wants to, who's the type person that wants to buy? This is somebody like you. so there's not that many people that are like you that are like, hey, I just have some disposable income that I'm going to use so that I can have better internet, random research tools and like ability to lurk and just find interesting things on the internet. I think those are awesome people, but it's not like mass market, right?

So you either got to charge a bunch or you go the other way and you charge very little, but you use, you get the value in a separate way. Like for you, what I would be doing is I would use this as a honeypot to attract a, But the type of person that's going to pay even $99, whatever, $100 a year to have access to this database is like somebody you would want to go hang out with for three hours, most likely. And so I would just use it as like the value isn't going to come from the direct monetization of this asset, but from the little community you build. And then the interesting either investments you get out of it or introductions or the company you started someone from this, that's, I think, where you're going to get way more value than. just trying to charge a premium for this for a person. Yeah, but it'll pay for her monthly expenses.

You're doing content right, plus a new thing. You'll make $25,000 a month, I think. We'll see. Yeah, but like, your needs are covered, right? So, like, you know, one way, one thing I think about a lot is like, you know, more of the same keeps me where I am. So, you know, if I keep doing things that kind of keep me in the same level of the game, I'll never have the bandwidth to do whatever it's going to take to get me to the next level of the game.

And so, like, for example, I had a course that I was teaching maybe five to ten days a year, not much. And it was making over a million dollars a year. So that's an amazing, like, effort to pay off thing. And then I stopped. And I was like, why? Because for me, making an extra $1 million a year is not going to get me to the next level of the game I'm trying to play at. So I was like, if I'm trying to get to the point where, let's just say, let's make up a goal, say I was trying to make, I want to get to where I'm making $20 million a year. okay, let's say that was the goal.

Then I need to have enough room on my plate, just empty space that will like force me to go create the thing that gets me to the next level. Or I might give things away for free, in fact, if it's going to like create the serendipity that's going to take to open up new opportunities that are bigger. And so that's just something to think about is like, how do you, do you care about, you know,

maybe the next level of financial freedom of, you know, sort of wealth that will, give you more runway, more ability to use money to do the shit you want, like the internet art type of thing. And if you do, maybe you could use this as a tool to like get the right people around you and do something else. I don't know. It's just work considering. No, totally. I mean, one of the biggest learnings from the book was some people are like, oh, you're totally undercharging, but it's like, how do you deliver a product at a price point that people are like so happy with

that they go and share it and talk about it and also like, yeah, want to work with you and like actually digest the information instead of... And requires no customer service. Yeah, exactly. Where it's just like, it runs itself, it markets itself. That's what ended up happening with the book. And so I am leading more in that direction. But then I also, I was expecting you guys to be like, no, no, no, like charge more.

Like you always undercharge. But I guess, I guess maybe I should keep it low. Well, like Tim Ferriss said something that changed my thinking on this. Tim Ferriss said, he goes, I had a strategy which was ultra free or ultra premium. He goes, I was going to give away 99% of what I do. for literally for free because I'm trying to reach the broadest number of people possible and I want to be over delivering. I treat it like it's a paid product, but I deliver it for free to the masses because then

on the one day, and he gives the example, he did a, this was back when he was doing four-hour work week and whatnot. So he's doing, you know, his blogging for free, podcast for free. And then he said, hey, I'm doing a two-day kind of like in-person workshop seminary thing. Is that open the kimono thing? Open the kimono. Yeah, exactly. and I think he did two or three million dollars in sales in like 30 minutes, right?

Because people were like, I will pay $10,000. He was like, it's expensive. I don't expect everybody to be able to afford this or want to. I'm not even going to promise anything. But if you're, what I do, like, I'm going to do this open the kimono thing. It's two days. And I think he made two to four million dollars on that day. And he's like, if I had been trying to like kind of charge along the way, like,

let me do this little ebook for $9. Then let me do this like monthly subscription for maybe I can get $20 a month. He's like, I would have had a smaller audience and less money. And so, and same thing with his podcast ads. He's like, I would rather have no ad in the thing or charge an ultra premium to a premium brand because there's always really, he said, there's always a market for luxury, right? There's always a market for the absolute best. So I wanted to make the absolute best product and then charge the absolute, you know,

best price I could for that. And that was like his strategy when it came to that. I think Alex Hermosie does a similar thing. So Formosie's like, look. I could be trying to make a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there, do a course, do a seminar,

do whatever. But he's like, no, no, no, I'm going to be really in your face that this stuff is normally what people charge for. I'm giving it to you for free, builds a bunch of goodwill,

builds a big audience. And then when he's ready to charge, he'll make all the money back and more when he finally does charge for the thing. In his case, it's a combination of acquisitions.com where he's like, I'm going to buy equity in your business

at this like super, super sweetheart deal for him because he's built up so much goodwill and reputation amongst his potential, like, you know, his potential, like, you know, acquisition targets. Or if he ends up doing ever, like a course or a seminar or a live in-person thing, he'll be able to charge $25,000 per person to get in. And he'll make $10 million on one day because he's kind of built it that way.

So I think there's something to learn from these people that play the real long game. Totally. I don't think I could charge 25K for anything. But we'll see. We'll see if I ever get there. But, well, you do. You get paid more than that. That's true.

That's true. So, I mean, you definitely do. And you definitely can. I think that you will eventually, for sure. Someone, by the way, I read the comments, and I read one from one of the episodes I was on ages ago, and someone wrote something like, wow, Steph has a really intense case of imposter syndrome.

And I was like, oh, true. Anyway, I guess if people want to find... By the way, I'll tell you. you this now, you do. I remember when I was negotiating your salary when you first joined and you asked for a number. I don't remember if I did this for you. In particular, women would typically do this. They would say a number and I would say a number back or I would just say a number to them and they would just accept it. And I'd be like, hey, you should negotiate with me. Women in particular were horrible at pushing back on their salary for what they should ask for. And my company was small.

in aggregate, probably higher in 75 people. But I noticed a small trend of women in particular did not push back nearly as hard as the men. There were many men that they would push back and it was laughable. I'm like, there's not a chance I'm going to give you this. But I guess I'll meet you somewhere in the middle to like adjust this. But like this is crazy. I was thinking you were a $150,000 your person. You're asking for $700,000. Like that's just ridiculous. But I remember with you, Steph, you were way, we gave you a lot of bumps, I think, over the, however long you worked with us, but you started way too low.

And I would encourage you to, maybe not for this product, but to definitely elevate what you should be demanding for pay. I think you're doing all right now, A16C, but I've noticed that with you, in particular amongst very, very, very smart and qualified young women.

Yeah, it took me around, what is it? So 21 to 28, 28 or 29 when I joined A16C, So it took me like seven years or so to actually learn to negotiate. So I agree. Can I tell you a embarrassing version of imposter syndrome that I have, which is, it's not imposter syndrome, but it is what I call Michael Scott syndrome, where sometimes, I felt this for like 10 years, I always hire people that are like super smart. That's great up front.

But the downside is sometimes you just feel like Michael Scott. You're like, oh, I'm the idiot in the office. And I'm telling these people, I'm actually. in their way. And these people are like, they're kind of looking at me like the way that Jim Halpert looks at Michael Scott. And I'm like, oh, no, it's happening. That's the Michael Scott thing is happening.

Have you ever felt that? Yes, I felt that way all the time. And then I realized that's actually, I felt that way for a long time. And then I realized, oh, wait, no, that just means I'm good at hiring. So like, I should just get out of the way. As Michael Scott would do, he turned it and do a compliment for himself. No, I felt that way too. I remember hiring people that were, A, older than me and B, smarter.

And I'm like, what the fuck are these people? Did I really just convince this person? Did I just trick this person into coming and joining anything I'm doing? I feel horrible about that. I feel that same way. One woman that's so good at what she does in our e-commerce business, she's so fast, like literally so fast and hyper-productive. Like, she gets like three people's stuff done.

in the same amount of a day. And she's the one who Michael Scots me all the time. I'm like, I'll be telling her something in the meeting. I'll be like, yeah, let's follow up next week on that. And she's like, I already sent it out. And I'm like, while I was talking, but I was giving you such a good anecdote and metaphor. And, oh, you just like finished it? Oh, okay.

I guess I could have shut up five minutes ago, huh? And I realized, actually, this is a great thing. Just like you said, Sam, it's not that I'm great at hiring. I said, now this is actually the bar. I only want to hire people that make me feel like I'm Michael. I'm the Michael Scott of the office. That's actually how it should feel when you're doing it right. That means you're good at hiring.

No, you just got to get the hell out the way. You did the hard part. And you're funny. That's the other thing. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm just going to quickly shout out. If people want to go find it, internetpipes.com. I guess we'll figure out the price.

It'll be live when this goes live. All right. That's the pod step. Thank you for doing this. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. Let's travel, never looking back.