My First Million - #74 - The $72B Chinese startup you’ve never heard of, a mysterious billionaire and the guide to post-corona opportunities

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Today's ep is possible because of Superside! Head to www.superside.com/mfm to hire a dedicated team of designers for your project! Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each ...others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) are back this week to chat about Second order effects of covid-19 - find here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17YkH4kc63t7JI7JJZR6i3-iebJd7kfRAzAK_ssl8bt4/edit?usp=sharing (1:04), RV rentals / Glamping (14:21), Art collections (22:54), Billionaire of the week: Mark Leonard of Constellation Software (27:57), Balance between prudent and excitement (38:04) and Group buying unlocking discounts (43:24).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by SuperSide. They're an always-on design company that delivers great design at scale, fast, affordably, and within 24 hours. Go to superside.com slash MFM, MFM as in my first million. So superside.com slash MFM to check them out. How are you, man? I'm great. I upgraded my internet. Hopefully it looks better.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Called Comcast, now paid 60 bucks a month. And just called them. And with a click of a button, I paid them more money. And my internet was supposed to improve. We'll see if it happens. Like magic. Great, great business to be in. I'm excited to talk to you.
Starting point is 00:00:41 I feel like it's been a little while. I got a bunch of random topics to talk about. I don't know. How about you? Do you have anything that was top of mind for you? Yeah. Well, I know about all the stuff that you, or a lot of the stuff that you have in here. Right.
Starting point is 00:00:55 Like, I know it to the point of I wasn't sure if I wrote it or you wrote it. That's for the best. Okay, great. Okay, so I'm going to start with, let's pick one that's interesting. Okay, so how about we start with this one? So somebody was, somebody, somebody, tweeted this and I saw it and I was like, this is pretty smart. So a lot of people right now are talking about coronavirus. How does the world going to change? And lots of speculation. I think
Starting point is 00:01:15 everybody sort of agrees. Okay, handshakes, you know, mic go out the window for a bit, live sports, you know, it's going to be a little tough. So there's some things that we know we're going to change and there's some things that you can't really predict their sort of second order effects. And so somebody reached out and they had put together this, they had like a group of people had put together this thing called the second order effects of COVID. I thought it was great. I'm going to find the PDF and I'm going to link it in the description here. I know one of the creators was this guy that I've met one time, super, super smart guy. He created, are you a Harry Potter fan?
Starting point is 00:01:47 No, but I know. I mean, I'm not a fan, but I don't buy the stuff. I've seen the movie. So he created this site back in the day called MuggleNet, which was. Oh, yeah, I know that guy. He also created a, oh, my God, pop. Or what was it? He's a viral con.
Starting point is 00:02:00 He's a viral cop, but he's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all about him. Tell me his name. I'm trying to find it. I can't believe I forgot it. Emerson Sparks. So they started sports media.
Starting point is 00:02:13 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about him well. I think his business is the one you're thinking about. That's right. So he started a chain of viral websites and they got really popular. But like everything in that era, I bet it just crashed. But if I met this guy once and I was like, oh, my God, if I could just bet on this
Starting point is 00:02:30 guy's lifetime earnings, I would bet right away. Like this guy's really, really sharp. Yeah, he's. He's kind of like almost a little geniusy. Yeah. I like when you say geniusy because it means like it's kind of hard to talk to. Yeah, like he's a little geniusy. But when I read about him, I'm like, dude, why are you doing these viral sites?
Starting point is 00:02:49 Like you could do anything. Yeah. And I bet he will. I bet he's going to be one of those people that transitions from like, yeah, I first created these, you know, the Harry Potter fan site that became number one. Then I created this viral Twitter account and these viral meme websites. Oh, and then I like solve climate change. Like that's what this guy's career should look like. Right.
Starting point is 00:03:05 all goes well. He's cool. So him and a group of people created this thing that was like second order effects. They were basically like, okay, you know, for example, what's the second order effect? So everyone knows a first order effect is coronavirus, you know, is wild. First order effect, you shelter in place. Okay, but the second order effect of that is like, are people going to have more babies? Are divorce is going to go up because you're at home?
Starting point is 00:03:25 Is grocery delivery going to take off because of that? And then there's like a third order effect. Okay, if grocery delivery takes off, they need to, you know, Instagram's hiring hundreds of thousands of delivery people. Okay, what happens when all those? people go to that job, now they need a healthcare system for a gig worker becomes more important. So there's like these knock on effects. And so for a business person, you want to think about, okay, oftentimes the biggest impact to the biggest opportunities are in the second and third order effects because you can start doing work now. And then as this plays out, those things,
Starting point is 00:03:53 those markets are growing rapidly, but you can kind of predict them. So a classic example of this was, you probably know this better than I do. There's some story like the highway system was built for, for, I don't know, I forgot what it was, like military purposes or something. something like that. But the second order effect was that like Walmart, basically. It was like, oh, people are going to exit and want to get, you know, buy stuff, get little, you know, get food, get drinks, blah, blah, blah. So the whole retail. Cars got faster. Yeah, cars get faster. The retail system takes off because now there's a highway interconnect system, blah, blah, blah. So there's a second order effects. So one of them that I just thought was kind of interesting was this idea of
Starting point is 00:04:28 drive through and drive in. So now that, you know, movie theaters are like sort of going bankrupt because all their chairs are so close to each other that people, like, people aren't going to go back to the movies. Movies are already kind of struggling, and this might be the knockout blow. And so people are talking about drive-in theaters. Is that going to be a thing? I could see it. I could see it, you know, sort of rising.
Starting point is 00:04:45 On top of that, you have drive-through. So how do you sort of minimize contact? Well, drive-through caffeine. So there's some coffee shops that are like, the photos I saw on Twitter, you know, the line is out the door. I've never seen a line this long except for Chick-fil-A. And so, like, what's this for? And it's basically just drive-through caffeine.
Starting point is 00:05:00 And so I'm pretty bullish on this. If somebody was, you know, right now they had like nine franchises, but they were doing well and there were a drive-through coffee concept. I would, you know, be very, very bullish on this thing expanding and going from nine to 200 locations over the next two years because I think the need for this is going to go up. What do you think? Okay. So what do I think? First of all, are people going to change their behavior forever? Let's talk about that.
Starting point is 00:05:23 Like, are shaking hands going to go away? Certainly now, like I don't want to do a lot of that stuff. But is that going to change your behavior? forever? I don't know. What's the, what's in a now? Like, what can we compare this to? Like, World War II? I mean, September 11th, like, when I see, when I hear low planes, I get scared. So like, no, no, no, TSA clearance, right? So like, you used to be able to just walk into an airport, take a ticket that didn't even have your name on it and board any plane. And it took you five minutes to get from the, you know, check-in desk to the gate. And now it's like, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:57 security buffer in an hour. You have to have your ID. It's got to have your name on it. If your name sounds a little sketch, you're going to come to this special room and get checked. The world changed forever from that. Sure, but we're also talking. So September 11th was definitely a lot of like force change like TSA. But then what we're discussing is like unforce change. Like when you and I see each other, are we going to hug? Are we going to high five?
Starting point is 00:06:20 Are we going to like, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah. So like how far away are we going to say? So I would imagine that some of these consumer behaviors are a little bit more analogous, analogous to that. I don't know, man. Will we change? I think so. I think that at least for three years.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Something is going to change. The question is, what's going to change and how long is it going to change? Or is it going to be sort of a temporary precaution that goes away? Well, so look, how long did you live in China for? Two years. Maybe not long enough to, maybe long enough to when they went through, they've had not, I don't know if they've had pandemics, but they've had a variety of outbreaks of things like this. Is their behavior different?
Starting point is 00:06:59 Yeah. like the masks is a great example. So like masks quite common in Asia to be, you know, something you just generally wear out and nobody even bats an eye or seasonally. Like when it's flu season, yeah, everyone masks up. I'm not trying to get the flu. And, you know, you don't see that here. But will you? Maybe you will. Like I would, I would expect. Do they go to crowded movie theaters? They do. Yeah. There's crowds everywhere in China. You like can't avoid a crowd. But, you know, you got like a billion people in a small city. So it's very, you know, there's crowds everywhere in China. But people do behave quite differently than they do here.
Starting point is 00:07:33 Gloves, you know, gloves are very sort of common there that people here don't wear gloves just on their day to life, right? But yes, I do agree. I think things are going to change. I think specifically big cities are going to, I mean, I'm biased because it's directly impacts me. I think cities are going to, our cities are different. Right. I do think that work is going to be different. We're getting rid of our office in San Francisco.
Starting point is 00:07:52 Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's all these sort of second order, third order effects, an example of a second order effect of the TSA. So first order effect is. TSA, second order effect is people selling toothpaste in three ounce bottles because that's what you need now to get through that. That became a market where before who wants this tiny little bottle. And so, you know, from a, I'm just trying to keep it from a business perspective because, you know, from a medical, scientific and cultural perspective, you know, don't listen to me,
Starting point is 00:08:17 listen to other people. But from a business perspective, I think that there are, it is worth, you know, taking a pen, go into a whiteboard and starting to map out, okay, if this, then that, and then, if that, then what? and the what is where your business opportunity lies. And if you're looking for that, it's also just a good way to guess and check. Even if you're not going to go do those things, the only way to get your gut to be good is to predict a bunch of times and be wrong or right and go revisit those. And so I often do this while predicting.
Starting point is 00:08:44 Also, let's talk about some of these predictions here. I pulled it up. So some of these predictions here are, so gyms are going to go away or significantly go away, which means innovation and home exercise. Obviously, that's like so obvious. But you're looking at the dock? That's not. Will you link it to me real quick?
Starting point is 00:08:59 That's like just, yeah, that's, I mean, that's not even a question, right? Well, I don't think gyms are going to go away necessarily, but yeah, people are going to, whatever the home exercise market was versus gyms, it's going to eat more share. Are you exercising? At home, yeah. But it's, you know, I exercise at home as much as I do at the gym, which is like weak on both fronts. Have you, oh, how about food? That's interesting funerals.
Starting point is 00:09:21 I don't know. Cities will become less popular. That's one of his predictions. Suburbs and rural become more popular. Like Bill Gurley came out today and was like, you know, camping and RVing is going to go on the rise because people still want to travel, but they're not going to want to travel, you know, in dense areas, staying in, you know, maybe maybe staying in hotels or uncleaned Airbnb. Yeah. I just rented an RV. So I'm going to do a three-week cross-country trip for my birthday in June.
Starting point is 00:09:49 So, yeah, I love that. I completely agree. I've never understood that in the first place anyway. Americans are kind of interesting. Whenever they want to do a gap year or like travel for a honeymoon or whatever, they always want to go outside the country. And I'm like, dog, like, you should explore here. It's way easier.
Starting point is 00:10:07 And we have everything. That's what's interesting about America. So we have every type of, I think we're the only country that has every geography or every climate. So anyway, another thing that he talks about is virtual tours and virtual museums. So on trends, we had talked about a company that was crushing it with. virtual museums. And we also talked about a company that was doing a, what was they called the VR thing? I don't remember the name of it, but I know what you're talking about. Sand VR or is that, was it sandbox? And I, yeah, so I think it's great. They're struggling though with this, right? Because
Starting point is 00:10:39 sandbox VR, you have to go to a physical place, wear a headset that somebody else wore an hour before and, you know, do this in person and they place their locations in malls and they're supposed to be foot traffic from the malls. So foot traffic is dead. Nobody wants to wear a device that somebody just war. And, you know, in general, this is like sort of a fringe behavior anyways. And so I talked to, you know, I heard from them that, you know, they had to be really conscious about how they're going to do this. I think they did some layoffs and whatnot. But they, you know, they have to figure out how are we going to survive and what does the new world look like. And so unfortunately, some great ideas and great businesses, you know, some markets got punted back a year or two,
Starting point is 00:11:16 four years, whatever it is. And some markets got pulled forward. Like, it's my friend Chris from first base and they do remote work setup. So you, you know, everybody's, now at home, but this wasn't the case when I started advising him. When I started advising him, it was like, hey, I think companies are going to be going remote more. And if you have a remote employee, they need a desk and a chair and they need a webcam and they need a microphone so they can work effectively remotely. Maybe companies will pay to give them a home desk. And I was like, I don't know, maybe they'll pay, maybe they won't. And then boom, this thing happened. And like his wait list has exploded, thousands of companies signing up and he can't handle the demand. And now every company has to have
Starting point is 00:11:49 a person like, you know, at the head of HR or whatever that is planning. How are we going to have so many employees remote. And also, hey, this is actually, this remote thing actually kind of works. Why are we paying so much for our office? Let's just do this. This is way cheaper. And so, you know, the world has changed for him. His market got accelerated by four years. Yeah. That's incredibly fascinating. What I think we should do is we should just link to this. This document is dense. There is no way that we can talk about all this. But I think it's cool. I think it's cool that somebody did this and that they just published it as a Google Doc that anybody can access. I think that's just like a cool way of going about.
Starting point is 00:12:23 about things. And also one that I like on here, one more that I like is church. So like, you know, church is one of the super spreader type of places where everybody congregates. People often hug or shake hands or touch. And it can spread throughout a community rapidly if you if you have churches open. And so how are people going to do this, right? Is church going going to go? No. Are people going to go in six feet, sit six feet apart? Maybe. I don't know. And so I'm of the opinion that church, like live streaming for churches is going to be a very big deal. I've been in the live streaming space for a while. So maybe it's one of those situations where, you know, to a hammer, everything's a nail.
Starting point is 00:13:00 And for me, everything can be live streamed. No, I, you're definitely right. Church is one of those things that's every Sunday so people can build a habit. And, you know, the experience of a live stream sermon is pretty much just as good as being there. It's not that much worse. In fact, in many ways it's more convenient. And you have all the sort of. community features like chat or donations.
Starting point is 00:13:20 I mean, that's like what the Twitch product is, for example. And I researched in there's a platform called Church Online Now or something like that. Church Online Platform, some horrible name like that. I just, it looks like a pastor who learned programming in his spare time and like, you know, sat in the pews and coded this thing up. Like it is so, you know, unbranded and backwards in a way. But he said they have seven million members or something crazy. And, you know, I guarantee that's not the best thing that's out there. So for me, you know, digital faith is a big thing, whether that's sort of like a next door for churches.
Starting point is 00:13:57 I don't know what that means, but sounds provocative. I like it. Is it, is it, you know, what is it? And so I would be, if I was, if that meant something to me, if religion meant something to me, I'd be like, now is my time. I need to combine technology with community building and religion. And I need to bring these real world institutions online. I'm very excited to see what happens with all that stuff. Speaking of this Corona stuff, you have on our sheet that you want to talk about outdoorsy.
Starting point is 00:14:25 I would love to talk about that as well. You talk about it because I don't really know shit about it. I just put it on there because I'm like, oh, interesting. And I didn't do any research. So you tell me about it. Okay. Let me, the good thing about us doing this remotely is my computers right in front of us. Okay, so outdoorsy, it's a peer-to-peer market.
Starting point is 00:14:41 This is the exact description. Peer to peer marketplace to disrupt. $32 billion recreational vehicle industry. Okay, so they've raised $75 million. They've raised a lot of money. Is this what you used to rent your RV? Clearly. You said you just rented a RV?
Starting point is 00:14:56 No, because I think I'm going to drive from San Francisco to New York and then maybe fly back. I have to figure it out. I technically haven't rented. I have a lot of outgoing quote. So I've got people who are going to be sending me back quote. So I think for outdoors, it's kind of like Airbnb where you submit it. Sometimes you've got to get approved.
Starting point is 00:15:14 And so anyway, outdoors. interesting. If you want to learn about this industry, there's actually, what's that guy's name who's on that TV show called Profit? Marcus, something. Yeah, Marcus, something. Yeah, Marcus, the profit. I've watched like eight episodes. Leonis. Yeah, Leonis. Yeah, that's right. Or no, Leimana, something like that. Well, anyway, a lot of people don't know this, but Marcus is actually, I don't know if he's the founder. I think he like aggregated a bunch or brought a bunch of companies together. So he's the CEO and chairman of Camping World, Good Sam Enterprises, Gander Outdoors, and the House Board Shop. Basically, all of this is around RV and camping. And you can actually
Starting point is 00:15:52 go and read about this company. And a lot of their information is public. So you can kind of see huge business, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars in income. And so what Outdoorsy is doing is basically kind of screwing up that model. And I love it. I don't know. Do you know what their revenue is? I don't know outdoors use revenue. I think it's quite high. If I remember correctly, it's over $100 million. Let me just do a quick check.
Starting point is 00:16:16 Let's see. Yeah, look, I believe it. Okay, $325 million in 2019. Jesus Christ. Okay. But there's a difference between revenue and is that their revenue or the gross bookings? That might be their GMV.
Starting point is 00:16:27 Let's assume for a second is their GMV because marketplaces love to do that. So let's say, you know, they're- So you take to that. Exactly. 32 million is their take, maybe. Yeah. So they're just exploding right now, eh? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:38 Yeah, this is, I mean, this is a great business. And, you know, we talked about before, hey, marketplaces are great. What are the fringe or niche marketplaces? And this is one of them, right? Renting RVs, you know, and now is the time. And so they, you know, so I think they're going to ride a wave of interest as people sort of crave being outdoors, crave travel, but need to be away from others. How about Hit Camp? Are you familiar with Hip Camp?
Starting point is 00:17:01 Yeah, they're like the same idea, right? They're like a turnkey glamping. Is that right? Camping. Camping experiences. Camping in the way that I would do. it where I'm like, all right, do I want to learn out of camp and go get an REI membership and buy like hundreds of dollars of stuff and then be like wet all night? Like, no, I'm not interested in that.
Starting point is 00:17:17 But this is like, hey, you know, sleep in this Instagram worthy tent is what I remember of it. Yeah, it can be as easy as that or it can be as difficult. You can make it as soft or hard as you want. Right. Yeah. So you could just like go and rent like a cabin, which isn't probably camping, but or you could just like get a plot of like an area and like land. And, uh, a, a, Apparently they're booming as well. So they've raised about $50 million. And what's interesting is if you told me about HIPCamp about two years ago, I'd be like, this is not interesting.
Starting point is 00:17:46 But it is kind of interesting. And there's a, I don't know if this is a company. But, okay, so I am like, I'm like a, a, you're a habit. I keep referring to this type of stuff. But what I always like to do is I like to look at comparables and I like to look at public information. So do you know what KOA is? Never heard of it. Okay.
Starting point is 00:18:02 So KOA, I don't know what it stands for, actually. But what it is, it's a, it's a, it's a nonprofit. and they have campgrounds throughout the country. And if you go to, like in Colorado, they're all over the place. You'll be on the highway and you'll see in the same place you see signs for food. You'll see a K-O-A sign. And what that means is if you're a member, you can, for I think it's like $20 a year, it's super cheap.
Starting point is 00:18:25 You can camp there either for free or for five bucks a night. Right. It's really cheap. And I used to use it all the time when I was traveling. And so according to some analysts or I think they're privately owned. They're not a nonprofit. They do about $40 million a year in sales, and they charge like five bucks. Right.
Starting point is 00:18:42 It's like dirt cheap. And so if you want to learn about that business, look up K-O-A. That's probably the best comparable. I can't believe, Sean, you've never heard of K-O-A. Never. Like, looking at it now, looks great, seems like an obvious idea. Fantastic. But what's interesting to me, what I love doing is I love looking at these older things like K-O-A, like Boy Scouts.
Starting point is 00:19:04 And it's like, show me the demand. And that kind of gives me an idea. And then if you just add add-ons and operate it in a way where you prioritize revenue and profit, then things get super interesting. And so COA is a really cool one to look at. Yeah, it's an interesting group. And I also think that in terms of RV, I would look at Marcus Leona, Leomas's companies. Right.
Starting point is 00:19:26 And a lot of that information is out there. I love it. I love hearing about businesses that I've never heard of that are successful. I feel like there's a, like my brain, I feel like is organized. Like there's a set of hangers and every hanger I can just hang another like business or business model onto. And then that's just mapped in my brain. And then when I see something new, I'm like, oh, is this a new hanger? Or do I just attach this to one that already exists?
Starting point is 00:19:51 And I start to see a pattern of like, oh, yeah, there's five things that are just like this. And so that's what I see when I love hearing about new things because it's just another thing to hang into my brain. Have you updated your home at all while you've been at your house? I had built a home office right before COVID because I was planning to work remotely anyways for the month of March, which just happened to be like COVID. So that's been like the only home upgrade. And then shit started breaking. My dishwasher broke and my dryer broke. And so I'm like, that's not an upgrade.
Starting point is 00:20:19 Yeah, that's it. I started going to the park every single day. And I bought these little like tiny fold out park chairs. And I've actually seen several friends buying the same product called Click. CLIQ. It's a, it's like, you know, whatever, a park chair. Like you go to a soccer game, you want to watch and you just want to unfold. But the key is how small and discreet can you make the fold in versus like, oh, fuck,
Starting point is 00:20:43 I'm carrying a chair all the way to the park. And I don't know. It's going to arrive soon. But I've seen like, I've seen three different people I know mentioned this thing. And I bought it myself too before that. I have began spending. So I've, I think I'm saving like Matt. I haven't.
Starting point is 00:20:55 I actually, ever since the, the stock market crash, I have refused to log into my accounts. Dude, everything's up. You know that, right? Yeah. I sold. So I was like, hey, dude, good news. Go log in. So like my philosophy was, I was like, man, there's going to be like dead bodies in the streets of New York.
Starting point is 00:21:16 And that's going to scare Wall Street. And someone's going to take a picture of like a body in the like an open van with bodies. And it's going to flip people out. And they're going to like say sell, sell, sell. And that happened. There was like videos of like these like ice trucks with like bodies in there. And nothing happened. And the day I sell that picture, I was like, I'm out.
Starting point is 00:21:36 Right. And it took off a week after. And so I'm still sitting on a lot of cash. And I've lost a lot of money. And I hope, well, I don't hope this. You hope to be proven right. If it goes down and I get back in. So anyway, I haven't logged in.
Starting point is 00:21:53 I usually use personal capital and I log in all the time to check my finances. I've not logged in. So I don't entirely know what's going on. But the other day I went and bought like eight. or maybe a thousand dollars worth of artwork because I'm like, I haven't bought anything in forever. I'm just going to buy exactly what I want because I'm normally pretty cheap. And I just haven't been buying shit. Have you been buying stuff?
Starting point is 00:22:13 Yeah, I buy like crazy dude because I shop online and now I lost track of like time and space. So I'm just buying things and then there's stuff arriving. And it's like if you can't go anywhere, the next most interesting thing is like someone comes at your door and leaves a mystery box at the front. You're like, oh shit, what did I order nine days ago? I don't know. I'm excited to go see what it is. And it's like this moment of fun.
Starting point is 00:22:32 So I keep giving myself that gift. But yeah, I'm buying a lot of stuff. Also, all the delivery stuff is like super expensive. So I'm like post-maiding and Instacarting. And it's like, you know, $400 for groceries or something crazy. So I don't know if that's just an SF thing or I don't know what's going on. Can we, all right, I want to talk about this Mark Leonard guy who you have. But before we get to that, I have a good segue, which is I'm going to get rid of these map.
Starting point is 00:22:54 Okay, so people listening, I have a background and I've got maps, which apparently is like a super basic thing to do. I didn't know that. But I have St. Louis. Yeah, it's like the most, it's like basic with the capital B. St. Louis, Nashville, or no, St. Louis, New York, San Francisco, me and my wife are from those areas. And I'm going to switch it up. So I have a wall of people who I am inspired by. Yeah, so let me tell you who I have. I have Steve Prefontein. You know who that is? Never heard of him. Who's that? There's a movie about him that's really great. You don't have to be a runner to like it.
Starting point is 00:23:24 But he was a runner at Oregon. He was the first person to wear Nike. So Bill Bauerman was the coach of Oregon track of field. his pupil, his athlete was Phil Knight together. They partnered and made shoes together. Steve Pfontein was probably the first person that wore him. He was one of and he was definitely the first sponsored athlete. And he was kind of a badass runner where he was like, he was like kind of like a full clip. So he would say shit like to give anything less than your best as a sacrifice your gift.
Starting point is 00:23:50 He said all this inspirational stuff. But he died when he was 26 and he was just kind of a rebel to how to cause. Then I have, and W. Wait, how do you die? He was drinking and driving and flipped over and crashed his cause. and suffocated him. Crazy. Okay.
Starting point is 00:24:02 So pretty tragic, very, very tragic, but he lived fast, died young. And he, uh, he was real tragic because he got fourth of the Olympics when he was a favorite, even though he was only 23. Anyway, it was a big deal. He's also like, like, really good looking. So it's like, easy to, like, admire him. Um, props to you for admitting that that's part of the appeal. All right.
Starting point is 00:24:20 Great. Yeah. He's like, you know, uh, romantic kind of, that type of thing. Like, you kind of look good. Um, then I have easy E and Dr. Dre. Okay. They're interesting to me because when easy, the E was only 23, 24, 25, something like that.
Starting point is 00:24:34 He created ruthless records, which went on to become a huge business, like hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales. And he was just like a kid from Compton who knew nothing, didn't deserve to be there. Or, you know, like on paper, like, what are you doing here? Anyway, they achieved it. And Dr. Dre fucking changed culture in a variety of ways. Then I have Felix Dennis and Ted Turner.
Starting point is 00:24:52 Ted Turner started CNN, I like him. Felix Dennis, he started a media company. And he was like Richard Branson, but more vulgar. Google him. And then I have, I've got three more. I've got Mike Tyson. I love Mike Tyson. He's screwed up so many times in his life, but he's done a good job of being ferocious and kind of coming back.
Starting point is 00:25:08 And then I've got Tupac. And then I think that's it. That's amazing. Great. Oh, Nate Diaz. Nate Diaz. All right. So you have like, I love Nate Diaz.
Starting point is 00:25:19 You have like the intimidators row. Dude, like I'd say the majority of your people fight for a living or like should fight for a living. Not intimidators row. But I'm incredibly fascinated with people who are bold. People who on paper should have done nothing. And they were really good at having bold ideas, but then also we're having fun along the way. Right. So that's what I like.
Starting point is 00:25:42 Like Ted Turner, I think he was a southerner. He stuck out, but he had a bold idea, and he laughed along the way. So I'm always fascinated by that. I went to Sully's house, our friend Sully, and he had this on his wall. I was like, who are these people? Why do you have these pictures? This is not your family? And I was like, because the first one I saw was Hillary Clinton.
Starting point is 00:26:01 I was like, why didn't you picture of Hillary Clinton on your wall? He's like, oh, these are people I admire. And he had seven photos. And I only knew like three of the people and told me the other four in a story. And it was like Hillary, I don't remember, it was like whoever, you know, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or something like that. And that was a cool idea. I was like, you know, I guess that's cool. Like, you know, you walk out of your bedroom every day and, you know, go to your office or wherever you're going.
Starting point is 00:26:24 What does he admire about Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton and Sully don't seem to like a thing. He loved Hillary Clinton. I have no idea why. He just thinks she's awesome. And I'm like, what? Okay, I guess so. I mean, not even to say, like, that she's not awesome,
Starting point is 00:26:37 but I didn't think that she was wonderful enough that an Indian entrepreneur at San Francisco cares so much to happen. I was like, I don't want to sit here and hate on Hillary. I don't hate Hillary. But I am so surprised she made it to your wall. Like, that doesn't make any sense. I definitely disagree with that one. Yeah. So, yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:53 It's just like mediocre maybe. All right, this episode is brought to you by Super Side. All right, so here's the deal. I'm incredibly impatient, like horribly, horribly impatient. And if I get an idea at midnight, by 8 a.m. the next day, I want it done. You know, but that's really hard because if something needs to be designed, where am I going to find a designer at midnight to try to make this thing bring it to life? So, you know, I don't think I'm alone.
Starting point is 00:27:17 Other startups, even huge companies need design help fast, and they just don't have the internal resources or expertise to get it done. So how do you get reliable design done without dealing with expensive agencies and lots of freelancers? You use SuperSide. That's our sponsor for this week. Just go to superside.com slash MFM and tell them what you want. They have a team of designers that can get it done fast. They are 20 times faster than hiring a designer and 50% more affordable than a traditional agency.
Starting point is 00:27:45 So if you need high quality design done fast, try SuperSide. Lots of fast growing teams that are stretched, are using them already. Check them out. SuperZi.com slash MFM. I've used them before. I love them. Check it out. So let's talk about this guy, Constellation.
Starting point is 00:27:59 So I know a bit about them. Sean put this on here as Billy of the Week. His name is Mark Leonard. You want to explain the background here? We sometimes do this billionaire of the week. So the Billy of the Week is Mark Leonard. Constellation Software. So I had heard about this from a few people because they do something that, you know,
Starting point is 00:28:13 we had Andrew Wilkinson on here and he buys internet businesses and sort of has this conglomerate of small internet business that he's collected that are now, you know, let's call it 100,000. million dollars worth or maybe a little more and a little less. And that's a fantastic success. So this guy, Mark Leonard, did that like he's Andrew's daddy. You know, like his companies worth $31 billion. What they do is they buy software companies and they roll them up sort of, and they're, they try to be a perpetual owner. So they're not like, they're not private equity where they're doing a leverage buyout and trying to flip, you know, cut it, skin it, flip it or whatever. They tried to
Starting point is 00:28:44 just own the thing for a long period of time and have the cash flows. And so what I like about this guy, what I thought was cool was this guy's like a Satoshi Nakamai. motto of boring businesses. So he, nobody knows shit about this guy. You can't find a photo of them really. Wait, what's that reference? Satoshi, is that the Bitcoin guy? Yeah, you just don't know a lot about him. Yeah. So this guy, you can't find photos of him. He doesn't do public appearances. He doesn't really talk. He writes his annual letter. And, you know, but so I was reading like kind of the definitive thing about him because I wanted to learn. And it's like, all we know is this guy's born in 1956, maybe in South Africa, maybe in England. And I was
Starting point is 00:29:19 like, what the fuck? We don't even know where this guy's from. And, you know, he wrote on his bio, he's like, it was a VC, but before that, he said, I was a banker, a valuer, a mason, a gravedigger, a dog handler, a bouncer, a sapper, and I win the energy researcher. I particularly enjoyed the bouncing, but an early retirement was necessary. So I love it. I don't know anything about this guy, but what he gave me, I love that. And I think half of those are like a joke.
Starting point is 00:29:42 But here's their business. So they buy, in the early on, they buy, they bought businesses that were, you know, two to four million dollar acquisition targets, so very small acquisition. Which is, on paper, you would say, that's asinine. Why on earth would you ever do that? Yeah, Trump changed. You know, okay, you know, small ball. But small balls turned into sort of big league returns.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And so, you know, this data is out of date now because when the article I was reading was like, hey, this guy has, you know, done really well. They did last year they had $1.2 billion in sales, 20% margins. They're doing 10 to 20 acquisitions a year. And at that time, the market camp was $5 billion. I looked at it while I was reading the article. It's now $31 billion. And so if you just invest.
Starting point is 00:30:20 They have a $31 billion valuation and only $1.2 in sales. No, no, that was the old one when they were at $5 billion market cap. Now they're at $31 billion in market cap. So, you know, if the ratio sort of held the same, it'd be whatever, $6, $7 billion in sales. We can see what it is now. But I love that this guy's mysterious. I love it. Dude, it's only, it's $3 billion.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Their sales were only $3 billion. So a lot of money, but that's, they got a good little. I wonder, I wonder why it's been on such of the run up because you can see the stock chart is like, you know, it's going up like crazy, and then they can use that money for acquisitions. And this guy, he writes these annual letters that are actually pretty interesting. So, like, if you're like me, I like to read Bezos's annual letter. I like to read Warren Buffett's annual letters. This guy is a new one I'm adding to the sort of arsenal of annual letters.
Starting point is 00:31:06 And he has lots of really interesting sort of views on business, none of which are like totally groundbreaking, but he does something that I think most people fail to do, which is the same thing Warren Buffett does, which is take a very simple principle that everybody would nod their head and agree with. and then, like, actually stick to it and do it for, like, 40 years. And that's, like, a winning formula. Most people, you know, nod their head and then go do some other shit, and they get their lack of discipline and lack of focus. And so I also like, you know, I was trying to read a little bit more about the company.
Starting point is 00:31:33 And, you know, they have sort of a focus on what they call vertical software. So they'll go for, like, within one vertical, or sorry, they looked at it. They said, hey, some companies are horizontal, like a Slack. Every company can use Slack as a messaging service. And Slack will be a multi-billion dollar company. What about all these vertical things that are like better software or specifically tailored software for a, you know, what if you're a golf club and you need to manage bookings, T-Times, memberships, and whatever else? Every golf club, you will pretty much use whatever the best software is and they'll pay for it every month reliably and they'll never turn. So they'll buy like that clubhouse software.
Starting point is 00:32:07 They'll buy healthcare software, public transit software, law software. And that's been their focus. I don't know if that's changed over time, but when I was reading about them, they try to consolidate vertical market software, which is that. That was a pretty interesting approach. What do you think of this guy? So I love it. I'm reading about what you have here. So I love doing these things and I love what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:32:26 And I actually, I'm going to bring up a different point. And I don't want to address it yet. But I want to ask your opinion of it in a second. But more so, what I'm interested in is, and I don't want to refer to like things I tweeted. That sounds super lame. But I was tweeting earlier about how I hired an operator. So basically Adam Ryan works at the company. And he kind of handles a lot of the operational stuff.
Starting point is 00:32:48 work sometimes down in the weeds, sometimes high above revision stuff. And it's hard finding someone who's competent to run a business. And so if this, if this guy, if he might have, does it say how many companies he has? It could be like 200, right? So I don't know if their model is that they keep the existing management or if they replace them. I'm not, I'm not 100% sure what they do. I'm sure there's some mix and blend there. One thing I saw that was interesting was, so they like Berkshire Hathaway, the execs of the company, do not get share options as their compensation, which basically, you know, incentivizes you to just boost the share price as you as much as you can, which is often somewhat short term.
Starting point is 00:33:29 So instead, they take, you know, 75% of their after-tax bonus and they can buy shares on the open market, and then those shares are held in escrow for four years. So if the shares, if the stock is overvalued because they are sort of temporarily pumping, you know, enthusiasm, energy or doing buybacks or whatever, they're buying overvalued stock. And so I don't know if this is perfect because maybe the other thing happens where they actually, you know, when they're about to buy, they sort of, you know, bad news dips the share price temporarily. They could buy it on the discount. So I'm not sure if any incentive system is perfect. But I thought it was interesting that they've thought through how should we compensate everybody and not sort of
Starting point is 00:34:04 follow the traditional playbook. So I want to dig in more. I've only just scratched the surface of this guy. I think there's a lot to learn here. But I wanted to bring it up because I think it's very interesting. and I like that he's a sort of mysterious character. I think that adds to it. So here's an interesting takeaway. And this, what I'm about to say actually kind of changed my business game. And I'm going to name drop here. But when Tim Ferriss invested in us, he told me, he goes, one thing that I've learned from,
Starting point is 00:34:27 I don't know who he learned it from, but he goes, there's this thing that I like to use called, I think he called it inverse incentives or, but basically the idea is if you, when you incentivize employees to do something, you need to actually have an opposite incentive that make sure it's balanced. So, for example, if you're going to tell your sales team, you have a quota of this number, and it's huge. You also have to have an incentive kind of like revenue collection, which means you only go after equality people who can pay bills or retention, which is you only get paid if you sell people
Starting point is 00:35:01 and you treat them well and they want to come back. And so, yeah, counter incentives. I think that's what they called it. And that actually changed the game for me a lot because what I've noticed is with people if you give driven people incentives, the right type of person will kill to get that done. And you want those people, but you actually really need that second incentive in order to make sure that it's quality and quantity. And so I love this incentive. But what I want to know is how on earth do they recruit all these people who are talented enough to run a business?
Starting point is 00:35:31 I've hired CEOs for a handful of small businesses that I've had. Most all, except for one or two, have been horrible. Yeah. Which maybe I'm bad at hiring, but I think it was also, it's really hard to find these types of people. And so in my mind, this company, Constellation, they're more like a recruiting company than an innovative software company. Yeah, you know, I think that is sort of the make or break.
Starting point is 00:35:54 I think you also invested in our friends who are doing enduring ventures. And so these guys are basically starting a modern day version of Constellation or what Andrew is doing or whatever, where they're buying companies to hold forever. that have strong cash flows and they want to own great businesses. And, you know, they've already closed. The first business they bought was a business called Upcounsel. Ironically, I believe this was sort of outside the model, which is, you know, to my point earlier, say a simple thing, nod your head and agree, and then go fucking do it.
Starting point is 00:36:26 I think that they did not do that with Upcounsel because Upcounsel was not a great business. It's a potentially great business, but it was currently sort of in Rocky Waters. But they got that at such a great deal. and they structured the deal in such a smart way that I think they'll still end up making a lot of money from it. But anyways, they're doing the same sort of thing. And their biggest challenge is how do you find operators? So when they bought up counsel, you know, the CEO that they placed was, you know, somebody that Xavier had worked with and knew very, very well. Anyways, they brought
Starting point is 00:36:57 in a team of operators, but, you know, they're pulling from their personal networks. That's what Andrew said he did as well, which was he pulled from people he knew or, you know, had worked with before in the past. But I think that is the, the largest challenge. with this business model is being able to maintain a, keep a great business, a great business by having good operators in place. Because when you buy out the owner, sometimes you may lose that great operations. And if this interests you, I think that there's a few giants that you can look up. And one of them is Alta Vista, or not Alta Vista. That's a, not that. Vista equity. It's owned by this guy named Robert Moore. I believe he's the richest black man in America.
Starting point is 00:37:34 I thought that would you. He's the guy who's famous for, I'm the richest. Wait, what? I wish. Well, he's the guy who's famous for paying the tuition of everyone at Morehouse when he gave a, an address, he said, by the way, all your guys is debt paid off. So he's cool. But that's what he does.
Starting point is 00:37:54 He does the same thing, as does trilogy software. So look up Joe Lamont, who we've talked about. All right. You want to talk about, oh, here's what I was going to talk about. Okay, so there's these companies like Tesla and basically a lot of stuff that Elon does, which is like this super sexy stuff. I mean, I'm not interested in it, but it is quite sexy to say you're going to send a, you're going to go to Mars or you're creating these cars that are neat and fun. And whenever I think about these companies, they're like the coolest companies where you create a hype video at the end of the year and you see everything they've done. And you're like, oh, my God, that's so sick.
Starting point is 00:38:33 like when they created like a video of Elon celebrating the one of his rocket's taking off. I was like, that's awesome. And so anyway, Constellation's not that. He doesn't do a video of him like looking at his golf club software. Right.
Starting point is 00:38:46 And it's pretty boring. But it's still fascinating because it's like a fun puzzle. How do you, Sean, like where are your aspirations? Like do you say like I want to do something that's full of excitement or do you find excitement in the boring stuff? So I used to be pretty hardcore about this where I was like, dude, the only thing worth doing, like if I'm going to spend my time, and I used to be really, like,
Starting point is 00:39:07 dismissive of people who were wasting their time doing things that were not sort of the peak of the peak. So I was like, okay, if I'm going to do, why would I do a job when I can own my own business? Then I was like, why would I own a small business when I can own a big business? They both kind of take up all my energy in my time. And it's like, if I'm going to do a big business, why would I do a boring thing? Might as well do an exciting thing. And that train of logic made sense to me. And I did that. So at Monkey Inferno, it was we are here to try to create the next hit consumer thing. We're like, we don't give a shit that that's low odds of success. We want to create, you know, Michael had created Bebo, which was like sort of like almost
Starting point is 00:39:39 Facebook. He had like come within sort of inches of creating a Facebook, but instead ended up in the MySpace pile and, you know, did well financially, but he didn't change culture. And so we were like, dude, we can do this. We can change culture. And so we tried every, you know, messaging apps, live streaming. We tried all these different consumer things and failed like crazy. You know, even things that like kind of worked, they ultimately were not successful.
Starting point is 00:40:02 because they were so home run driven. They were grand slam driven. So I've backed off that. And I backed off that maybe because I'm just burnt dude, I just want to get wins. Like, I don't need to change culture. Like, I need to change my bank account and my lifestyle. Like, so I don't know to what extent I'm, um, it's like, I can frame it either way. Am I more mature because I'm like, look, I don't have, I'm not as attracted to the
Starting point is 00:40:23 sexiness of it. I just want to build, you know, great things, great businesses. Or am I just, uh, fearful and burnt out from failure? It's hard to say for me, right? My view definitely has change where now I'm like, oh, that Elon path? I don't know. That sounds like a lot of effort. Why don't I just do this simple thing that's going to like work?
Starting point is 00:40:40 Yeah. And part of me is like, okay, I agree and I agree and I am the same. And then the other part is like, yeah, dude, but you're just kind of being like a push. Like what were the 12 year old and you like think is awesome? And every once in a while you got to listen to that. And so I don't know how I feel like because the other day I was thinking about making a purchase. And I sound like a kind of entitled rich dude right now, which I'm not implying I am either of those things. But I was going to buy like a car, like a cool car.
Starting point is 00:41:09 And it wasn't expensive. It was like a $10,000 car. And it was not practical. And I was like weighing the pros and cons of it. And then I was like, yeah, but here's this pro, which is like, this is fun and cool. And I want it. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:41:22 And I'm like, wouldn't I become such an old man like where I'm not just doing shit just because it's exciting? And I do think that we have to give into those urges a little bit more. Elon recently was asked about this. I think on, I don't know if it was Joe Rogan, I don't know where it was, but he was talking about it. He was like, yeah, like Warren Buffett, like, he's like, I'm not a huge fan of the guy. I'm not the biggest fan, but he didn't say he disliked him. But he was like, you know, what he does, he's a capital allocator. Like, he spends his time trying to figure out, do I buy Pepsi or Coke?
Starting point is 00:41:52 It's so boring to me. He's like, he's figuring out to put $10 billion into Pepsi or Coke. He's like, that's boring to me. Like, I want to change the world. And, you know, I'm going to make cars electric so we don't have to depend on fossil fuels. And I'm going to get us to Mars so we're interplanetary species. And I'm going to do neuralink so that our brain can control, you know, our brain can download
Starting point is 00:42:13 information and upload information like we're a computer in the brain. And I'm going to do boring company because I fucking hate traffic. And I want to get, you know, from place to place in, you know, 15 minutes rather than two hours. And I'm like, okay, you know, respect. Like when you hear that, you're like, yeah, That does seem like the maximum of winning. But, you know, I guess my view is, my views have broadened, but I'm like you where when I hear myself say it, I'm like, don't be a pussy.
Starting point is 00:42:37 Dude, just like, come on, go for it. Do what you would do at the beginning, you know, like don't lose that sort of dream just because of practicality. So I'm a fan of motorsports and motorcycles. And I like some of these adrenaline stuff. I like old Porsches and all these exciting things. and I see these guys on YouTube, like Ken Block, and he's got this, like, compound. Or I'll see, like, Travis Pistrana, and he's got this compound.
Starting point is 00:43:01 It's just, like, grown-up playground. And I'm like, oh, one day, that would be cool. And then I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, now. Like, why can I just do that shit now? And so I constantly have to battle that in my head. And so it sounds like you do the same. It is a battle. I have what's prudent, like, prudent versus, like, excitement.
Starting point is 00:43:18 And the balance between the two. Okay, let's leave with one or two little ideas real quick. All right. So I have one idea. So are you familiar with Pinduo Duo? No. This is one of the largest companies in China. I think like a $30 billion company that grew in the last, I don't know, four years or so.
Starting point is 00:43:35 All those numbers could be wrong. But you get the idea. Big-ass Chinese company. So what the hell is Pinduoduo. Pindu-Duo is like Groupon, but it's with your friends. So what happens is you go on Pinduo Duo and there's like an item. The number one selling item, tissue boxes. Number two selling item is like a vacuum or some shit.
Starting point is 00:43:52 But it'll be like tissue boxes. Here's these tissue boxes. You can get them for, let's say, you know, $20. You can get these tissue boxes. But if you buy with your friends, you can all get them for eight. And it's like, create a team to buy. And so you see the item you want. You create a team.
Starting point is 00:44:09 The way you create a team is it just gives you a link and you share that link through WeChat or whatever your messaging apps are. And if your friends are like, yeah, cool, I'll join the group. I'll buy at eight. Like I'll pitch. I will contribute to the cause helping you get a lower price and I get a lower price. and I get a lower price too. And so there's these team buys, basically.
Starting point is 00:44:24 So this thing has become really, really popular in China. And I don't think it's become popular really anywhere else. I know there's a couple of companies trying to do this in India as well. And like, you know, God knows, Indians love a good discount. So I do think this will work in India as well. But I was thinking about this. So I was like, okay, you know, if I was an entrepreneur, you know, just sitting on my, you know, at my desk and there was nothing on my desk, I would just write the word Pindu-Duo Duo 4X.
Starting point is 00:44:49 and I would just figure out what the hell X is. I would spend a day on that brainstorm. And so, go ahead. So I love it. Can I give you, let me give you, let's get some points of reference here. I know, I like listen to it. While you're talking, I'm like in my, my brain's buzzing. So, you know, Tilt.com, Tilt got Tilt.
Starting point is 00:45:08 It was called Fult. It was called Crowd Tilt. So James tried to launch this. He raised a lot of money. It crashed and burned. But no, no. That was different. And then another.
Starting point is 00:45:19 CrowdTilt was not a discount. It was just, hey, we need $500 for a kegger. Everybody pitching your 10 bucks if you're going to come to the party. So it was a way to collect money, but it wasn't discounting. You're right. So let's get rid of them. Drop. Do you know drop, formerly known as MassDrop? They do this, right? So I have, yeah, kind of. It's similar. You know, I think to make this work, it's all about the packaging and the positioning. Like so MassDrop and this other company can offer the same technology and do the same thing. But you really got to, it's real. It's real. you got to get that angle exactly right, I think. And MassDrop is trying this. And from my friends who have inside information, which I don't have, they claim that MassDrop is booming. MassDrop has raised close to $50 million. And everyone I talked to who knows about the space says that it's a sleeper and it's doing wonderful. And they do a little bit similar stuff. So I think that that's cool. Another bit of information is something like Masterclass. So Masterclass actually allows you to share passwords. one or two people. And someone in our trends group posted about it and said, like, hey, does anyone want
Starting point is 00:46:27 to split Masterclass with me? And it was our most engaged post ever. And so I completely see the validation here. This is incredibly interesting. So, yeah, and back in the day, I think Woot was like this. And there were some others where it's like, hey, this TV is, you know, cheap. And it wasn't exactly like, it wasn't exactly the same. I think the magic of this is that it's your actual.
Starting point is 00:46:49 friend group that you use to do this. So the problem with Groupon and all these others is you get these deal hunters. So there's just this population of deal hunters. They're getting everything at a discount. And they're not necessarily like the best customers long term. They're not retaining long term, all that stuff. What's cool about this is, you know, one of the challenges for any business is you have to acquire customers. So here's how I would do this today. I think you can create Pinduo Duo for Shopify. What does that mean? So there's all these Shopify stores. I don't know. Let's call it 100,000 Shopify stores. Every single one of these Shopify stores wants more customers. they'll try to get those customers through either Google SEO or Facebook ads, two primary ways,
Starting point is 00:47:22 and then word of mouth, let's say, that's beyond that. So, you know, they go and they go to Facebook and they'll pay $15 for a customer to come purchase from them. And if they want another customer, they've got to go pay another $15. And that's unfortunate, right? And they'll offer discounts and they'll try to do a referral program or whatever. What I think they should do is one of the largest sort of booms in Shopify is this thing called afterpay or a firm, which basically says, hey, when you're checking out, instead of paying $85 for this, you can do monthly payments for $9.
Starting point is 00:47:51 And that increased the checkout rate because people can pallet $9 a month better than they can do $90 today up front. And so adding an afterpay button increased sales. So I think if you added a buy together, save together button, you would increase sales. So the way it works is you're about to check out and it says, great, you can either have this item for $80. But if you get five friends to buy, you all get it for $60, you all get it for $50 or whatever it is, some discount there. And you basically are saying, rather than paying $15 per customer
Starting point is 00:48:19 and Facebook ads, I will pay, you know, $15, I'll pay $10 right now to discount this item for you. Because you're going to go acquire five customers for me, right? So like if I reduced it and I'm, you know, I'm basically reducing my cost by, or my revenue by $20, 20 bucks per customer, I'm able to sort of acquire customers through a new channel besides Facebook ads, which is sort of steadily price rising over time. And also the way that if you get introduced to a product through a friend, I think you sort of have a better relationship with the product and better experience, better retention than if you are only being advertised through by the company.
Starting point is 00:48:55 So I would try to. I think this is, I think this is the best. It's very hard. Very hard because you have to, you're building something from scratch here. And it's all about like this is definitely a all or nothing type of thing in my mind, where you have to get the positioning really, really right. But I think if you do, you're on to something huge. And I also think, you know, it's kind of like a live streaming thing.
Starting point is 00:49:19 It's like live streaming isn't like hard to make. I mean, there's so many of them. But you really got to find that angle that gets people. This is more big business than small, certain success. Big business most likely to fail. The other thing that I think is interesting here, I think, on I think about Shopify. And I was like, okay, what other buttons would I put at checkout that I could basically offer a trade? That's a great, that's a great framework.
Starting point is 00:49:40 So like, for example, in mobile games, they do this all the time. You run out of lives and it's like, hey, you could buy another life. You can share this with a friend and get another life. Or you can watch this 30 second ad and get another life. So mobile games are like, you know, it's like a little, you know, wizard sitting inside a slot machine, just trying to figure out of take your money, your time, or attention. And they've optimized the shit out of this. And so what can you learn from that?
Starting point is 00:50:00 So maybe if you're at Shopify or you have a Shopify store, maybe there's a plugin that you can add to your checkout, which says, hey, if you want an extra, you know, dollar off or $2 off, just click this button and like us on Instagram. And boom, now my Instagram is growing with every customer that joins or whatever. Yeah, there's a bunch of, there's definitely a bunch of tools that allow you to do that. But I understand. The most popular one is email, like give us your email and you get a 15% off or whatever. And I think that's cool.
Starting point is 00:50:23 That's like level, level one. But like this idea of team buying of sharing to your Instagram, liking us on Instagram, I think there's just more things that you could do at the checkout page that would say, how do I get your time, money, or attention in some way that you're not currently giving me. And so, I don't know, there's a lot there because Shopify is so big now that if you build something that works on Shopify, you can build a, you know, $10 million, $20 million business pretty quickly because every store will just adopt these, like, best practices fairly quickly. I think that first thing you're talking about group buying is incredibly interesting. I've always
Starting point is 00:50:54 thought that Groupon, I love Groupon. I think that their valuation is shit. And I'm like, there's got to be a better way to make that happen. And I love Groupon. I love Groupon. I'm also familiar with APSumo, which does group discounting for software and then social stack, I think it's called great companies. What else could we do this for? Where else could you do group buying? Is there any other, like, sort of space? Like, absumo is a great example where they're like, okay, cool, sort of software.
Starting point is 00:51:23 Are there like, I don't know, could you do this? Yeah, I mean, like, where could you do this? Well, so a lot of this stuff has been tried and it doesn't always work, but you definitely could do it. I mean, this is what Kickstarter is, right? you do with brand. Any type of a brand, they're like, we have to tilt. We have to cross this threshold.
Starting point is 00:51:40 And I don't know what it could work for. I'd have to really think about it. I just, I feel so ignorant on what it could work for. So one way of thing about it is it works better when the thing costs the maker nothing than when it cost the maker something, right? So software is great because every incremental sale of a piece of software cost the maker zero versus like if it's a physical item and it's like, well, now every TV, if the more people that buy this, the more people, more,
Starting point is 00:52:05 TVs, I have to sell out of loss. And so I think digital works better than physical. That's one, like, premise I would hold when it comes to this. And the other one is like where maybe, I don't know if it works better for low price, probably higher priced items because A, the discount matters. And B, maybe there's just more margin, you know, to be captured even after discount versus the low price items. So maybe you'd be looking for sort of high priced digital services or software.
Starting point is 00:52:31 Yeah, I mean, I think that you could definitely, what about using it? So I would want to use it for what businesses buy. So like, for example, I want to buy Pitchbook, but it's $20,000 a year. And I'm not going to use it that much, but I would love to split it with someone. So I think that's incredibly interesting. One weird idea is I think that I would want to figure out a way to use it for lawyers. So instead of having a legal firm, be my lawyer, I split a lawyer with you and five of the people. Right. By the way, that's a great name.
Starting point is 00:52:59 Split it or split. It would be a great name for a company that was trying to do this. It's like, hey, you can do this. or you want to split it with four others and hey you all save you have to have a ton of volume to make this work the other way you could make this work is if you make it to that cool let's say the price is a hundred bucks and if i'm going to split it with five people i think what ends up happening is that everybody gets it for less than a hundred but the total adds up to more than a hundred right like uh like the total like i end up making more than i would have off of a single customer paying full price by by letting
Starting point is 00:53:29 you both split it first for 70 and now i get 140 and you get 100 right it's like how personal trainer does group training. They're like, if you want one-on-one, it's $100 an hour. If there's two of you guys, you each pay $70 an hour. And it's like, I now make more per hour. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I love split it. I'm never going to create this because it seems way too hard. But I understand the need and the problem. And I would love to be involved in as a customer or some capacity. Great. Love it. All right. Split your brains. We just call this. Good brainstorm ring. We'll be back in a couple days with another brainstorm. People said, you can't keep up this pace. How can you keep coming up?
Starting point is 00:54:04 up with new ideas every week, twice a week. Are you crazy? But they don't understand. They don't know how this brain works. If you spend enough time doing it, which we definitely don't always do, but a lot of times we do, it is not hard. And if you lower the bar on what you call an interesting or good idea. So you have to simultaneously lower the expectations and practice.
Starting point is 00:54:22 That is the criteria. It's that easy. Leave us for review. Tell us what you think. Tweet out us, whatever. We'll talk you all soon.

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