My First Million - #80 - The Guide on Generating Startup Ideas

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

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. Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) kick around a several new business models, and then they break down frameworks for how the best founders develop and source startup ideas.. The second half of the show is also Shaan and Sam talking through current events. Today's topic include: Shaan and Sam talk about gaming credit card points (0:16), Shaan brainstorms on a service for creating tax-advantaged foundations for athletes or other high earners (4:00), Sam and Shaan talk about how to come up with ideas (9:00), Shaan describes the “old and new” framework of idea generation (22:00), Sam talks about why he hates courses as a business model (27:00), Sam and Shaan talk through current events.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam, what's up? What's going on? Let me pull up some of our documents. Okay, a couple things I thought were interesting. One, you posted something about this thing called MoPoint. What is that? So Mo, it's my friend Mo, him and Ramon grew up together. Mo's from Afghanistan by way of, where's Ramon from Netherlands, and then moved here.

And they used to have a business. It's shut down now, so I could talk about it, where they would buy and sell airline points. and he became an expert on how to maximize points. And so I'm getting into this now. And so, for example, if there's all these ways that you can, like, if you're spending money on advertising on this, on that, you can maximize your points and fly for free forever for years. And so he would teach me how to do it myself.

And I was like, Mo, turn this into a course. And so that's what it is. Let's, let's pip them out, though. Is it MoPoint.com? Yeah, I checked it out because I was pretty interested in this. like in the same way that you want like a tax guy to help you save money on the back end, you know, whenever you do like pretty significant credit card spending. And a lot of times if you own your own business, you can rack up a lot of spending on credit cards.

I hate going and figuring this stuff out. I just feel like it's a waste of my brain and it's a waste of my time to go like optimize my spending and buy points so I can travel free and book all this stuff. But I like know it's valuable. And so I was hoping to get like, what's the shortcut? What's the like, you know, either you just. do it for me or like what's the 80-20? Give me the few things I can do that will give me the highest return on my time and effort

because I know I'm sort of wasting this opportunity and I don't want to go become an expert in the stuff. But if you're an expert, fantastic. So I signed up for it. You know, points are interesting. I just got into them recently. So I earn 300,000 to 400,000 points a month. And that translates to 1% of that in cash value.

Right. So if I spent a million dollars a year, I'm, through my credit card, which sounds like a lot if you're just an individual, and that is a lot if you're an individual, but if your business, that's nothing. I get $100,000 cash back. Now, here's the cool thing. That cashback in most cases is tax-free. Interesting.

So if you live in San Francisco, that's the equivalent of getting a salary of $100,000. That's a full-time job. Yeah, and so it's great. And so I've actually met some entrepreneurs who earn, I think you can get up to $360,000,000, Some accountant's going to like tweet at me and say I got it wrong, but I'm almost positive and it's controversial. I'm almost positive you can get up to $350,000 in cashback. And so I know this one lady who's got this flower company and she gets $350,000 in cashback income a year. Yeah, that's great.

I have a friend who he basically negotiated with his investors. He's like, I'd like to pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card. And so he earned like whatever Amex, double black. platinum gold, whatever it is, like the highest tier for life, because they were spending like, you know, three million a month on AWS or something crazy. And so like, he's like, oh, if I ever want to fly, I fly first class now. Oh, oh, I get like free equinox. I get free this. I get free that because that's the perks of like the highest tier of Amex. And he's like, yeah, I got lifetime because during my company, I just asked, can I just put this on this card and keep

that, you know, tied to my name? And they did it. And I was like, that's pretty amazing. And so that's what Mo's trying to do. Now it's just like a question. course and hand-to-hand combat like consultation where you're trying to help people. But that is kind of interesting to like log into a portal and or like technology and it does it for you. That is pretty amazing. And, uh, and your transaction fee is either upfront fee or you take a, you skim a little. Right.

Uh, that is incredibly interesting. I like it. Okay. So I have another random idea I want to talk about. So I have a friend, uh, shout out to my friend Mike who, uh, he went to Duke where I went to school. He was Duke's best football player. at the time.

Like he was like, I think he led the nation in tackles or something like that. So he's an amazing linebacker, his football player, goes, he's a little undersized, but he gets drafted or he gets a tryout with a couple teams.

And he ended up getting cut after a year, I think, from the Indianapolis cults. And that was sort of like the end of his football career. But he built a ton of connections and still has connections with athletes in the NBA and NFL.

So I was talking to him about it. And I was like, you know, what problems do these guys have? What stuff are they trying to do? Because these are often a class of people who have a lot of money, have specific problems to like people with money, fame, and, you know, specific lifestyle. What are some ideas that, you know, problems that they have that I've just never seen,

but I could solve because I understand them. And so one of the things he had mentioned, not even as a problem, but I was like asking how they did it was many athletes start their own foundation or charity. You've probably seen this like, you know, oh, you know, random wide receiver. It's not just like the top of the top. It's like random wide receiver. I have a foundation back in my city. It's for kids who, blah, blah, blah, kids and books.

It's for... Justin Porier, one of my favorite fighters has one. And so I was wondering, I was like, A, why do they do this? And then B, like, how do they do this? Like, could you, like, build a business around this? And so on the why, you know, there's some interesting things. And again, the accountants are going to be sort of out in full force correcting me on this. But it seems like basically the, you know, there's some tax advantages to a foundation

in addition to, like, obviously wanting to give back. because often athletes come from pretty rough backgrounds. And so they do feel this pull of, hey, I've made it. I won the lottery. How do I give back? So there's the emotional pull to give back and create a foundation. But then there's the financial pool as well, which is there are some tax advantages to doing it this way, where you basically are you're able to give and you're able to give today and reduce your taxable income.

And that money goes to the foundation, which can then over time spend that money. long after your career is over even. So you can separate the time of giving and then the time of spending. You can separate the tax of it from the giving timeline. Yeah, I forget the name of it, but you and I have a friend who had a large exit. And what he did was he put away a significant amount of money, I think, a very significant amount of money. He put it into this charitable account. And over the next, I'm going to butcher this, I think over the next five years, he has to spend that on

what's a nonprofit called a 40. 5.1.3C? Yeah, he's got a, he's got to get rid of it. So whenever I see like, it's an interesting charity, I'm like, hey, guy. Yeah, here you go. And there's other things like a DAF, which is a donor advised fund, which is what Jack Dorsey said, I'm going to give a billion dollars away, and he did it via DAF. So this is other ways. But I guess what I point my idea was, cool.

So there's reasons athletes want foundations. They're clearly doing this. but I know athletes, athletes are not excited to go figure out the paperwork, to start a foundation, to make sure they're reporting on time, all that stuff. So I was wondering, is there a Stripe Atlas for foundations? Is there a push a button, get your foundation spun up without having to get on the phone, without having to print out a piece of paper and go mail it somewhere? Because I think you could build a pretty niche, but potentially pretty lucrative subscription business

where these foundations, there's a spin-up fee, and then there's an annual maintenance. basically to keep your foundation in good standing. I think there's a business there. So let's talk about Atlas for a second. So Atlas is a thing with Stripe, and it's a click of a button set up in a LLC. C-Corp or LLC in Delaware. Why, how does that make money?

Well, it makes money. So it's strategic for Stripe because if you're doing that, you're probably going to stay in the Stripe ecosystem. So they're like, cool. How do we get more customers? let's get new businesses to get created, and then they'll use Stripe. So it's kind of like when Facebook gives away internet

to people who don't have the internet. It's like, cool, we'll give you the internet, and guess what you're going to do with the internet? Use Facebook. So Stripe's doing the same thing. It's like, how do we increase the rate of new startups because startups are who uses Stripe? And then if they grow, they grow with us.

And fantastic. We got them while they're young type of thing. So then how would this make money? They do charge a fee. So like when I did it, I use Stripe Atlas to spin up my company. And I figure what it is, a couple hundred bucks. But it's great. It's like, I don't want to talk to.

to a lawyer. I trust that this will get set up properly. They do all the filing and documentation. They just email me. Hey, here's your tax ID. Here's your entity. Here's the articles of formation, et cetera, et cetera. And so Stripe Atlas was great. It took me three weeks and I don't know, $250 or something like that.

And I got my company set up. And so why did you do a C-Corp? I did an LLC for me. Oh. But if I wanted to do a C-Corp, like if I was going to do a startup that was going to raise money, I would do a C-Corp and I would have used it for that. Let's talk about the Sam Altman thing.

All right. So Sam Altman, who's the guy who runs White Combinator, or doesn't run it anymore, actually, but he was the president of Ycombinator. And kind of one of the more well-known guys, Silicon Valley, he put up this blog post called Idea Generation. And he said, you know, one of the most common questions I get is how do you get ideas for a new startups? A lot of people want to do startups, but they don't quite know the idea or they don't have

a lot of conviction in it. And he says something interesting. He goes, why is he once tried an experiment to fund people who we thought would be good founders, but with no ideas. He goes, and I think every company in this no idea track failed. And it turns out that founders have a lot of ideas about everything. Like, great founders actually have a lot of ideas. If you have a founder who can't think of an idea, they probably shouldn't be a founder. It's kind of his takeaway. But then he starts to explain. All right, so how do you get ideas for startup? So he says, thing number one, you want to be in the right environment. So you

want to be around the right kind of people. So he said, who are the right kind of people? He goes, you want to be around people who can have a good feel for the future. They will entertain improbable plans. They're optimistic and they're smart in a creative way. And he says they have high idea flux, which is pretty good for our podcast. I consider both of us idea machines. And that's what he says, that's what he calls idea flux.

So the sort of rate of ideas coming in and out of their body. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints that most people have. They don't have a lot of filters and they don't care too much what other people think. He says, this is important because the best ideas are pretty fragile. Most people don't even want to start talking about them because they sound kind of silly up front. And like, take the hustle, for example, oh, we want to be this big bad media company. We're going to do an email newsletter. And an email newsletter actually sounded quite silly to people who are traditionally in media. This was, you know, back if you rewind several years. So you want to be around people who won't make you

feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea. And they certainly don't feel stupid when they mention bad ideas. and he basically says stay away from people who are like the world has beaten them down or they're the type that belittle your ambitions. And unfortunately, this is most of the world. They hold on to the past. And if you want to live in the future, you don't want to be around these people. And then he says, okay, so here's the sort of next thing that would help you get good ideas. So first is be around those types of people. The second is identify a tectonic shift that's happening right now.

How is the world changing in some fundamental way? can you identify the leading edge of that change and the opportunity that unlocks it? For example, mobile phone comes out in 2007-2008, and then you get all these companies like Snapchat, Uber, Airbnb, etc. That were launched in that time on top of that core fundamental shift. When a big shift happens, the big companies usually get beat by fast-moving and focused startups. So you want to ask yourself a question like, what's something that's possible this year that wasn't possible last year. And pay attention anytime something like that comes up, there's probably

a lot of good ideas in that space. The last thing is, if you ever feel like something is like, if you can say the statement, I'm sure this is going to happen, I don't know if we'll be the ones to do it. That's a good sign. He's like, Uber was like this for me. The first time I used it, it was clear, I wasn't going to be hailing a cab any longer or calling the dispatcher, but it wasn't clear to me that Uber was necessarily going to win the space. And then the last thing he says is it's important, sorry, this is kind of long. It's important to think about what you are well suited for. So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product

market fit. And he goes, lastly, you can test a good idea if you can articulate why most people think of it, think it's a bad idea, but what you understand about it, that makes it a good idea. So that's a final test. All right. So I thought there's a pretty interesting post. Anything in there. Yeah, I think it's crazy interesting. And I didn't break this up because I don't even care about promoting this. But so Gagambiani reached out to me about three months ago. And for trends, we did this thing where he like just gave a talk and people signed up and it was neat.

And he was like, hey, I'm thinking about maybe I want to launch like a school or something. Can I like partner with you guys and you promote this course I want to do? And I was like, yeah, that sounds interesting. And so me and him just started riffing more and more. And I really got fascinated with this idea of ideas. Like, why is it, Sean, that you are good at finding a. ideas. And I was like, I don't, I don't know why, but I wonder if I could, like, give frameworks behind it. And so he's kind of leaned the way, and I'm just kind of tagging along a little bit.

And so we're hosting this thing. It's mostly him hosting with a little bit of me. And it's called the ideation boot camp. And I put together what I thought was all these frame works on coming up with ideas. And a few of them that I have, coincidentally, I've never read the same often article until you just told me, are similar. And so a few of them are, like, I like to do reverse at engineering. And so what I look at is I can go to like a website and see like how they do it. Because to me, if I can see how someone does it, it helps me realize what's possible. Another one is unbundling. So I like to look at like really big things like eBay or Craigslist or Reddit and being like, okay, if usually if something's huge, it becomes a victim of its own success and they can't move fast enough to adapt on an early like interesting change. And so we talk about like I just made up ways to figure that out. And then, let's see, is there anything?

else that's interesting that is related to that because I didn't realize that he kind of actually discussed that. Oh, and then another thing that I like to do, and coincidentally, the things that I'm talking about is what he's talking about, we're just going to like tactically. And it's like, how do you look at, like, he talked about something that's growing quickly, but, and you like hop in on it. And that's actually quite hard. And tell me what I'm missing here. The things that I really love to do is I like to look at forums and comments and article comments. and user reviews for apps on iTunes. Here, like, what, what about, how are people using this shit that's like,

makes them love something or makes them hate something? And that's what I used to come up with ideas. So what Sam Altman said was get something that's growing quickly early on that, like, you think is going to be the future. How else do you discover those? So there's two ways. So one is you discover a platform that's growing really fast and you go on top of it. I'll give you a perfect example of this.

Zoom is growing like, and crazy right now. I think it went from like 10 million users to over like 250 million users during just the COVID crisis. You know, my mom and my auntie used Zoom now because that's how we celebrate birthdays during COVID. And they, you know, Zoom used to be this enterprise thing. So Zoom's growing like crazy. I have this friend Victor. I don't even remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, but he created this thing called Zoom URL, basically zmurl.com. And it's basically event bright for Zoom. So he noticed the problem of like, hey, cool, everyone's using Zoom to meet up. But Zoom's like, kind of invite and like, you know, the sort of like splash that page doesn't exist.

So there's not a cool way to like make an invite for a Zoom event. You just send this ugly link and you say join this Zoom. That's where we're going to do this conference or this birthday or this whatever. And so he just made a really pretty auto generator. You put in your Zoom link and then you can upload a photo. You can put the details, blah, blah, blah. And you make this little landing page for your event. And he's growing like crazy because he's just growing.

He's piggybacking on top of Zoom very operational. on the platform. And he's doing something that, you know, Zoom probably isn't going to get around to doing for a little while, so he's got this opportunity to grow, solving a new problem. And so the other way, which is, this is, I think, where I see you do this less,

is about technology shifts. And I think this is where Sam Altman is actually talking about more, which is, you know, when you grow on the back of an existing product or platform, it kind of sucks because you end up with this platform dependency, and then they can often kill you or clone you or you just get stuck on that platform and you never get off. Whereas technology shifts, like, oh, shit, we couldn't do this before, but now machine learning is good enough that this is now possible. Or, for example, my friend told me about these little NFC stickers.

Do you know what that is, near field communication? Yeah. So basically, I bought these on Amazon. They're like these tiny little stickers that cost like, you know, 10 cents each or something like that. And if you get these in bulk, they're very, very cheap. And you just program them so that, like, if somebody just moves their phone into this thing, it touches, taps this thing. It's like Apple Pay. it will fire something open on their phone.

It can open up a website. It can open up whatever. And I'm like, dude, this is great for marketing. Like, I should just put these on products. Or, you know, this could be in my shoes. It could just say, is this a real Jordan or is this a fake? These little things can be embedded everywhere because the cost has come down and the reliability has come up.

And the core platforms like iPhone and Android, now, you know, by default, will react to these NFC things, just like they do QR codes. So there's the, so technology shifts is, I think, the one that most people don't understand because they don't have technical literacy. So they don't know what's going on. And they don't know when something before that was impossible is now possible because it was like actually just a subtle shift over time or the cost of this chip has dropped.

And now it's really economical to do something that before that would have been ridiculous. Or now the chip is small. It used to be so big. So how do you identify them? So for example, I have a meeting every week with my former CTO for my startup because he lives in that like bleeding edge of technology. And I have an hour a week that it's called the cool shit hour. It's on our calendar.

And he just shows me cool shit. And I just told them, look, when we're usually in meetings, I talk 90% of the time. You talk 10% because I'm the kind of talker sales guy. But in this meeting, you're going to talk 90. I'm going to talk 10. And the cool shit hour is just you demoing to me cool shit that I don't know about because I don't understand cryptocurrency the way you do. I don't understand VR AR the way you do.

I don't know about these other technological shifts that are going on. So we've been doing this for a month now, and it's fucking awesome. I basically got a front row seat at this. And all I had to do was just ask a smart guy who is in that world. But the more generic way of doing that is just to hang out with those guys. So again, it's sort of like what this post was about. It's like, who do you hang out with ends up being what's in front of your eyes? And so we hang out with a bunch of business people that figure out different ways to make money.

So for us, how do you make money? It's just a question of which way do you want to make money? I know 100 paths. And I have five examples of each of those 100 paths. I have 500 different examples of how to make money. I just got to choose one that fits me. Whereas people who are in the world of technology, they don't really know exactly how to make money,

but they can tell you 100 interesting things with technology. And so sometimes you've got to hang out with them and eat lunch with them three times a week so that you're hearing those things. Put yourself in that position. Yeah. It's like you just got to hang out like in the fringes. And I think that like great places,

great places to hang out in the fringes are... Reddit. Reddit, Hacker News, telegram groups. The way that you have to look at user behavior and you have to find this fringe behavior that's growing quickly. Right. You know,

a couple podcasts ago, I went off on this random tangent about defy, decentralized finance. And it was just like, you know, I'm speaking gibberish. I don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about. But it's because I discovered this fringe where I saw all this activity happening.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't even understand this. But I know enough to know that this is unusual and there's a phenomenon. and I need to know more. And so, like, boom, save that tab.

I pin that tab open in my brain. And I'm like, come back to this. You got to know more about this. This is unusual. This is new. This is interesting. Well, I think that's what you have to do when you have ideas, which is you have to actually steal from a lot of different places. So you like, take like, wow, at a restaurant, I only have to pay for what I order or something.

Or with Uber, like, I don't actually have to like have. I don't have to own the cabs. Right. You know what I'll give me an example. So two ideas. if you do a little idea sex with them. So Cloud Kitchens, we've talked about that in the podcast before, so creating a virtual restaurant selling on top of postmates, Uber Eats, etc.

And then in the world of e-commerce, I was thinking about upsells. Upsells is obviously critical to e-commerce. It's like, you're buying one thing. It's like, hey, do you want fries with that, right? Hey, do you want this extra thing? And it increases the order value by 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever it is. Upsails are critical in e-commerce. In the world of deliberate food delivery, they basically don't exist.

So I was thinking, like, how many times if we were ordering, you know, Chinese food or Mexican food or whatever through some restaurant, why doesn't Uber Eats just do a, you know, sort of have a cloud dessert company that's always just like, do you want to add some ice cream on top of that? Or, hey, we just made brownies, whatever. And like, I bet they could increase the cart size. And it shouldn't be another restaurant. It should be a upsell across all orders of all restaurants that day. And so, like, I don't know, you can sort of mismash ideas if you see something that's interesting or critical in one area. in another area they don't do it, that's usually, you know, makes for an interesting thought experiment.

I completely agree with this. What I'm wondering is, can you teach people this or you either got it or you don't? No, no, you can for sure teach people this. I would love to say you either got it or you don't. That would make me feel awesome because, like, I got it and other people don't. But the reality is I didn't have it and now I do. And I know exactly what I did to get there. I hung out with people who have a bunch of interesting ideas and I got thirsty for that.

So I started hanging out with them either in person or. Or my Twitter feed is just full of those people. Like, I don't have, you know, I don't put sports into my Twitter feed as much. Like I surround my feed with that so that even when I'm just browsing, that's what I get. The second thing is like start to come up with these frameworks. So, for example, one framework I have, you should steal for your thing is like you, if you imagine this two by two grid. On the left side you have, what type of problem is this? Is this a new problem or an old problem, right?

Old problem. People trying to meet their mates. They want to date somebody. That's an old problem. New problem. Hey, I'm trying to throw a Zoom event, and I don't have a good way to share that. That wasn't a problem that existed five years ago,

but it exists now. And so new problem, old problem, and then you have new solution, old solution. So it's like, cool, old solutions to things can be applied to new problems. So that's what the Zoom URL thing is. He's taking an old solution, like Eventbrite or splash that,

or like these proven methods. He's just saying, cool, I can specialize and tailor that to this new problem, which is Zoom events, rather than in-person events. and then you take new solutions, which are things like,

oh, wow, so crypto lets you have trust or like a digital contract, so I don't need an escrow person. So maybe, you know, I can take an old problem, like, you know, escrow and a home sale, but I can do it in a new solution. Notarizing. Yeah, notary.

Okay, cool. Yeah, exactly. So a new solution, push a button, somebody has GPS on their phone, and they come to you and they solve your problem for you. They either pick you up and take you somewhere or whatever. Cool. Maybe I can apply that to you.

this old problem, notary. And so you just take that two by two grid and you say, cool, what are all the new solutions that are interesting to me? And the other one is, what are all the new problems that are interesting to me? You just keep jotting those down. Anytime you see one, you know, whatever that is. And so that's a framework you can use to understand ideas and figure out, is this idea actually something novel or not? Well, it's novel whenever you cross old problem and new solution or old solution and new problem. Those are the two boxes that the new ideas come in. If it's an old problem, old solution, there's nothing new there. Don't do it. You're blowing my mind. I don't understand how you come up with these, like, you know how people

used to say Obama talks in like quotes? Like he always like, he just has these one letters that are like really great. You talk in frameworks. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know why. But I think it's because I like frameworks. So I'm studying them and then I just naturally start thinking that way. Another, another way to practice this, if you want to become an idea person, is like James Altrecher shared but he was like, every day I write down 10 ideas. It doesn't have to be good, bad. It's just a daily practice of idea generation. Because if you think about it, you're like, oh, man, I wish I was better at ideas.

Cool. Do you do that? Do you practice coming up with new ideas every day? Oh, you don't. Okay. You know, I also wish I was fit. But if I don't go exercise, then what do I expect is going to happen? I'm not just going to magically get fit.

And so same thing here. I have two that I do. I don't do the James Altiture one, but the two I do. One is this podcast twice a week. I get up in front of a, you know, a lot of people and I try to come up with new ideas. That's a practice. How do I prepare for that? I have these documents on my phone and my laptop.

One's called the biggest idea in my head. And I have every month, and I just write down this month, what is the biggest idea in my head? And I just put it there. And so, like, I'll go to my document right now. I'll read you one of my biggest idea in my heads. Sean, everyone has asked that you share this shit and you never have. Yeah, you know, these are, I don't know. know if I want to share these things. Some of it I want to share. Some of it I don't want to share.

So like in April, I refinanced my home and the biggest idea in my head was like, holy shit, that was so much work and so painful. Biggest idea in my head is turning refinancing into a five minute online process. I don't know how, but if there is a new solution, that's an old problem that I would want solved. When we were doing the weight loss challenge, the biggest idea in my head was, holy shit, everybody needs a little monitor in their body that tells them how their body's reacting to the food they eat. If we want to change people's diets and not have half the country be obese, we need to have real-time feedback loops so that when you put that piece of chocolate in your mouth, you pay a price

immediately and not like five years down the road. And so the biggest idea in my head was how do we make these glucose monitors so cheap and readily available that everybody gets feedback for everything that they eat? It'll help the country eat better. It'll help the whole world eat better. That was the biggest idea in my head for one month. And so I just write these ideas down. And then, you know, I basically have a place to put them.

I'm just, I'm like being a listener right now. I am thinking about this. But I think it's great what you guys are doing. If you guys are going to release these courses or classes, um, I don't know. I don't know. I like really, the truth is is that we don't have hustle con revenue in June. And he had done all the work. And I was like, no, okay.

Well, we, well, I'll work with you to do it. As a business, like our business, like we have an ambitious goal to build a really large company. I think courses will not get you there. Yeah. I think that it was simply like a thing to like, well, let's just try it. And it actually covered our hustle account revenue. So, uh, or profit. So we, I will not do this. I will not do it ever again. Gotcha. I hate the course business. I think it is, it is not fun. It is great for a solopreneur. It's not great for, uh, for a company. No, I think it's shit. I think that if you're reforge, which is a five,

thousand dollar thing for companies that is interesting but i still think it sucks to host like i don't i don't think it's like maybe it makes some profit i don't know if it does but it definitely does but i personally don't like it right i don't think most people even finish the shit yeah most people don't i think they like gagan who created he created what utami right um yeah utami he i think they were the ones who came out and said less than five percent of people finish these you know at one point in time mooks massively open online courses were all the rage. Everybody said, MOOCs are going to revolutionize education.

It's going to change the university system. And then they came out and they were like, look, we made a Harvard education free and open to anyone. All you had to do is click a button and enroll. And then you've got to show up and take it. And you could have a Harvard education for free online from the comfort of your own home. And less than 5% of people, I think,

finish the course. And I think that tells you a lot about why people do a thing. You know, people don't go to university to learn. That's a sad truth. people go to university to get credentialed so that they can get a high-paying job. So if you want to compete with a university, you should actually create a credential that gets you a high-paying job. That gives people confidence that if I get this credential, I will get a high-paying job. That's, I think this is what you needed.

This is what you, your next thing will have to be. This is the area I'm most interested in. And if I could just figure out an angle, I'll do it because there's this other great talk that came from the YC Mafias by this guy, Richard Hamming. And it's called You and Your Research. You should go read it. It's a speech he gave. and I didn't know who this guy was. Apparently he's like a kind of technologist from back in the day.

And he talks about his time at Xerox Park. And Xerox Park was responsible for like some of the biggest. What's it called Richard? Richard. Richard. Richard. Richard. I think he's,

Richard is his name. Hamming. I don't know if his first name is Richard. Maybe I just inserted generic white name. But Xerox Park is where like, you know, the visual graphic user interface like Steve Jobs went to Xerox Park and was like, oh, mouse points at item on screen. That's how computer should work. And he like stole the innovations basically from there.

because they were just doing R&D, and he was like trying to bring shit to the world. Anyways, he talked about Zyrox Park, and he said, he tells the story. He was at lunch one day, and I asked my coworkers, these brilliant people, all the brain in the world

is stuffed into these guys' skulls. And he's like, I asked him, what is the most important? What is the biggest idea in your head? What is the most important problem in your space? In your industry, what is the most important problem? And then they would say a thing. And he's like,

what are you researching? and they would say a different thing. And he's like, why aren't you working on the most important, the most burning question in your space, the most interesting thing in your field? Why are you not working on it? So his message is basically, ask yourself that question. What is the biggest thing in my space? What is the biggest challenge or opportunity in my industry? And why am I not working on it?

And you should go work on it. He says, the filter is, you have to ask yourself, do I have a novel angle at how I'm going to attack that problem? Because if I just go back, if I, like, the big problems are kind of known, but you need a new. attack vector of how you can solve that problem. If you don't have a new attack vector, you're just going to waste your time and energy. You're going to get the same result as everybody else. But if you have a new attack vector, then it is your responsibility as a smart and talented person to go do it.

So that's how I think about this university thing. For a long time, I already knew the last project I'm going to do is I'm going to teach a much people. But you need a new attack factor. I think that that's bullshit. That is only one way to do it because if you think about it, like a lot of great restaurants aren't particularly not. novel in the solution.

Oh, I mean, they're like novel in branding or they're novel in that Sean is making it. Do you know what I mean? So I think that is a little bullshit. Yeah, but I think restaurants are bullshit, right? Like, um, no, they're not. You're wrong. The restaurants are terrible

businesses. No, you're wrong. One of the Tillman Furtita owns, uh, he owns casinos, but he also owns some restaurants. Yes, he owes some chains. But he, he, he, He owns the golden nugget and he owns a whole bunch of other stuff too. Yeah, and like some steakhouses and like bubblegump shrimp,

just like fast casual stuff that regular people go to. And it's like one of the most profitable privately owned companies in America. So for example, the best restaurant chains all had a new attack vector, right? McDonald's realized the new attack vector and they productionized fast food and that they had a real estate model and a franchise model to back it up. Chipotle came out and they did the same thing. thing, but they had, they realized sort of the fast casual model, which was different, which was people are creating. There are many cases where the, the amount of success they have is not into proportion to the amount of, their new novelty is not in proportion with the amount of success.

So, okay, here's what I think. If you're talking restaurants, the analogy there is like, I'm going to create an online course too, right? That's me opening up my restaurant, just like everybody else has a restaurant, but my restaurant's run by me. I think I'm a good cook. I think some people will like my, will like my, will like my, um, my restaurant. What I'm trying to do is sort of change the restaurant industry, right?

So like, when I talk about education, it's not like I'm just trying to create a course. I'm trying to make it so that, I guess here's the analogy. I don't want to build a car. I want to build a road. So roads basically are new platforms that anybody can create a car on.

And you can get a lot more leverage if you build roads versus if you're just trying to build a car, if you're just trying to be a car driving on the existing road system. You know what I mean? Got it. No, I understand. This podcast is a car.

It's us getting on here and entertaining people. We're going to reach a certain set of people given a certain amount of effort. It can scale pretty big because we're using the internet and it's awesome and it's free. That's good. It's better than the cars of old where we would just go to an event and we would host a meetup and 40 people would show up and we would talk. That's the old way. This is a much better way. It's a much better car.

But it's still not a road. A road is podcasting. Create something like podcast. boom, you've changed, you know, you've really changed the world. And that's more exciting to me. We're on the same page on that one. I think we had an interesting podcast. Yeah, this was fun.

All right, let's get out of here. Hey, guys. This last part is actually me and Sam talking a little bit about the protests that are going on right now. And not really about the protest. Really, it's about how we have experienced it so far. You know, what we've been feeling, what we've been thinking, you know, the emotions we've had. I wanted to know what was on Sam's mind. He's traveling right now.

He was in Texas. I was in California. You know, we contemplated taking it out because, A, this is a business podcast. You know, we try not to get political or anything like that. B, you know, we're definitely not experts on this. And, you know, it's pretty easy in today's age to just get ripped to shreds for saying the wrong thing or not having the right most smartest woke take you can have about something. But, you know, it was a conversation we had.

I wanted to know how Sam was doing. and he wanted to know what I was thinking. And so we chatted a little bit about it. So we're leaving it in here. Hope you guys enjoy this part of the conversation. It's really hard. It was really hard to record this podcast and be like, hey, let's think of those brainstorm new awesome ideas, new products we could build, new businesses we

could run. It was really hard to do that, given what's going on. And so we tried our best to put out some content. We hope can take people's mind off things for a little bit. It's a lot of people, it's very heavy. and it's not necessarily good to sort of keep your mind occupied with such a stressful or sad or emotional topic at all times. So we wanted to put out a podcast episode today, but we also wanted to talk about what was going on.

So this last part is us just talking about our lives right now and how we've been experiencing what's happening. So hope you guys enjoy. I'm in Austin still. And what's going? What's the world like in Austin right now? crazy everything's crazy I don't think it's as bad as San Francisco

but the world is crazy I decided to we got a new office down here and so I rented a house to see everyone and it's cool Austin's a great city what do you think's going to happen

to San Francisco do you think it's going to like is this going to be the end of San Francisco being like the place I think so yeah I think so for a couple of reasons you know, right now I'm selling my house. Yeah, I was going to say, your house looks different.

You're decorating it to sell, aren't you? Yeah, I am trying to sell my house right now, so it's about to go up for sale. And I'm trying to move to the suburbs of the Bay Area. And so right now, because I'm doing that, I'm in the middle of the market and listening to people and hearing, you know, what are they, what's it like? Is the market hot to sell? Am I going to get a good price? When I try to go look for something else, is there a lot of stuff available, or is it

bidding more. And, you know, just like you would expect, there's sort of a, you know, a flight to the, a flight to space right now. And not like the SpaceX account. I'm talking about like physical house space. People are leaving this. De-urbanization. Yeah, de-urbanization. People are leaving cities. They're leaving San Francisco for sure. So a lot of people who are in San Francisco are here because of the career opportunities. And now that the tech companies are saying, you know, either we are already remote or we're going remote or we're way more remote-friendly. and your work from home for the sort of foreseeable future, there's basically no reason to be in a city paying the premium,

the extreme premium. I mean, like one bedroom for $4,000 a month, two bedrooms, six grand a month type of rents to be in the city. And so like, you know, when a studio condo is a million dollars in the city, you know, if you don't have to pay that, you're not going to. And so people want space. People want more affordability. And people want to be away from like a whole bunch of other people from this virus.

And so that is driving a lot of people out of the cities. Now, some people say, oh, that's just temporary. Personally, I don't think so. I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Once the companies start letting you be remote, and it doesn't matter where you're physically located, why would you live in a more expensive area? Only if that lifestyle really appeals to you,

which it will for like 20-something-year-olds, right, to be in cities. But right now you get the 20-something-year-olds and the 30-something-year-olds because the 30-something-year-olds are there for their career, and that's going to go away. I feel like I've been in Austin for a week now. I'm going to stay for another week. Maybe I'll stay one more week. Down here, it is definitely happier.

Like the way of life is for me and for many others. I understand why you'd be happier here. Dude, my new house, I got a pool. I'm like a swimming pool. Like, what is this? This is amazing. It makes me happy just looking at a swimming pool. I like it too.

My thing, though, is I miss San Francisco. I want to come back. I do miss a little bit of a, struggle. I also miss the people. But San Francisco is like, I hate the people and I love the people. San Francisco has like actual, you know, real problems with crime and homelessness and stuff like that. I don't think anybody wants that and where they're living. And so I think, you know, there's part of it that's the energy of a city. It's like, oh, I love being in New York. I love being in San Francisco.

I'm around all these energizing, interesting, ambitious people, a bunch of single people. But then there's just like crime and homelessness and like extreme expenses that put a burden on you. And I think that's nobody likes that. I almost feel like and not in a real way, but just because I can't think of a better word, a little homeless where I'm like, well, where the fuck is my place now?

Like, where's my, like, you're wandering? You know, because I'm, yeah, you and I, we're not quite similar. You've done it more than I have, but me to a lesser extent of lived in many different cities. And I finally felt like I had a home in San Francisco.

And now I'm like, shit. Right. Like, it's way, I'm like, damn, it's way different. And so I'm,

I'm pretty, sad about it, to be honest. I've been depressed over it. I'm also sad, obviously, about all the other shit's going on. Is it, are you seeing unrest and protesting and looting where you lived? I'm seeing it because I'm just glued to Twitter and

I'm just scrolling and I can't believe my eyes and it is so sad. There's so many different things going on at the same time. And the shitty part about that to me is that everybody pulls a different meaning away from it. So like, if you're biased going in,

is, you know, if you're racist in one way, you're going to look at this and say, oh, man, they're rooting and they're looting and rioting and this is awful. What did those small business owners do? Why are they getting their store smashed? And then if you're somebody else and you're looking at this and you're like, dude, people are sick of it. They've hit their breaking point because this has been going on for so long, this police brutality. And I totally understand what's going on. And then other people are looking at it and they're sort of like, hey, what's like, why are these other malicious groups kind of hijacking the movement and just inciting violence and, you know, Antifa or some people believe, you know, Russia, China, whoever it is,

who's dropping these pallets of bricks off trying to bait people into violence? And, you know, some people are just trying to make the world burn. And so there's all these things mixed together. And I think whoever you are, you're going to select the evidence that supports your feeling. and you're just going to get stronger, you're just going to see more evidence towards your view, and it's going to make people more divided. My friend shared something, and it was like four circles,

and it was like, I'm pissed off about the racism in our country, and Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matters has a point. I'm pissed off that businesses are getting ruined. This is not the right way to do it. I'm pissed off at the police, because I think most of them are good,

but a few bad cops ruin shit for everyone. And then I forget the fourth one. And then it was like at the center, all the circles had a little bit of everything. And like, you can be here. I was like, that's how I feel. I'm angry and sad. What was the fourth one? What's the fourth circle?

I don't know what the fourth one was. Let's see. It was really great, though. Did you happen to see that? But no, that explains like exactly how I feel, you know, and how many people feel. And, you know, I think, it's really crazy. There's a whole bunch of things that you hear or you learn from these experiences where you're like, oh, you know, that is a sort of a nugget of wisdom or a bit of

empathy that I didn't have before. And so, you know, when you see people that are, you know, one great quote I saw was, when you have a thousand good cops and ten bad cops, but the good cops don't police the bad cops, then you have a thousand and ten bad cops. And, you know, I believe that. And then that sort of applies to my life too. Like in what, anytime I sort of stand by and do nothing while an injustice is happening, that makes me sort of complicit in my own way, right? And, you know, I think about little minor examples of that in my own life. And then, you know, one... It was George Floyd's... George Floyd's death was murder and the police should be held responsible.

I think most cops are good, but police departments are corrupt and there are some bad cops, looting businesses and destroying properties immoral and it hurts the cause. I empathize and I agree with Black Lives Matter protesters and believe in them and their right to be And then right in the middle was like, I am here. And this is sad. Right. Yeah, it's really crazy. And I know people don't listen to this podcast to hear like, you know, talks about

socioeconomic issues and racism and whatnot. But, you know, this, I think, affects everybody. This is very different than anything that's happened in my lifetime where you have riots breaking out across the nation all simultaneously. And things really do feel like they've hit a breaking point for many reasons. I think also the fact that people were pent up at home for the last three months, I don't think that helps necessarily because that's a sort of a bunch of, a bunch of, you know, just water boiling over, you know, at a certain point as well.

I agree. So I agree. I don't even love discussing this stuff because I don't think about it a lot. And I also tend to, I try to like talk about the positive. But let me bring something up that I don't think I have brought up. And I want to hear your opinion. So I don't, this doesn't. matter and it doesn't change. I don't think it should like validate or does not evaluate

anything I say. So like my wife's black. My family's black. I'll have black children. And this was the first time or half black or partially black children. This was the first time that I was at my house with Sarah, my wife. And like she broke down. She was like, I don't, I don't know how. She's like, I don't know where I fit in on this because she's like a successful black woman. And she's like, I haven't had a lot of racist stuff happen to me, or if any. Like I, and it was, and she's like, but I, yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was just a total mind fuck because I'm like, fuck, what am I supposed to, how am I supposed to, I don't, I didn't know what to feel. Right. I didn't, I was like, I don't, I don't know what to do.

And it was incredibly exhausting. Do you, you, you, you're India. Yeah. Do you consider yourself white or not white or what? Definitely don't consider myself white. And nor does anyone. who sees me thinks I'm white, but... Well, I don't know.

But I get what you mean in the sense of, like, in some ways, like, do you feel that you're privileged or prejudiced against? I think that's a different way of looking at it. And, like, you know, my sister, so I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like, you know, not the most open-minded and racially friendly place. And so my sister, when she was in kindergarten, you know, students would draw a picture of a pig and then write her name on it and cover the pig in mud and brown mud. And then they would give it to the teacher and the teacher laughed.

And my sister always remembers this. Like she was, I don't know, six years old. And she vividly remembers the teacher sort of looking at this and laughing and saying, no, no, put it away. But like being, you know, involved in it. And I never experienced that myself. I don't understand that. What's the pick have to do?

Just like brown, brown dirty in the mud, you know, that sort of thing. And, and, you know, I remember, you know, when she went to my mom and was like, why can't be white type of thing. Whereas like, you know, asking questions as a kid just trying to understand why am I different. what does that mean? Why do other people think were worse than them? That sort of thing. I personally never experienced that because I luckily moved out of Oklahoma when I was really young and went to different places where it was less so. Or just got lucky in sort of my experiences

around who I was around. But I guess I would say like, you know, when 9-11 happened, you know, it was not fun to be a brown guy in America, right? Are you any religion? Are you Muslim? No, well, I'm not religious, but I would be Hindu. I would be Hindu, but that's typically what most Indian people are. But yeah, I'm not religious, but I do grow a beard pretty quick. And so, like, yeah, you know, like, when you go to the airport, I don't think you think about how do I look today. Whereas I think about that because I'm like, look, I'm not trying to get hassled for no reason here.

So let me shave before I get on this flight. Or like, you know, I had friends who like are Muslim who had like keys, their house keys take it away from them in TSA because it was like, this is, you know, potentially a. a dangerous thing. And they're like, this is my apartment keys. What are you talking about? How does that make you feel? So the fact that you have to shave, are you angry or are you, where do you, what does that make you feel like? I'm not angry about it. You know, I, I sort of have this opinion that my personal philosophy, if you're going to boil it down to any one thing is the only thing you have control over is your attitude towards the present moment. And so that's empowering and disempowering, right?

It's disempowering because it's like, shit, I can't control anything that's going on. I can't control how other people feel, how they're going to act. I can't control the results I'm going to get in my life. But it's empowering. It's like the one thing I control is my attitude towards the moment. So that sort of is a superpower because then no matter what the situation is, no matter what the moment is, I can decide what my attitude about it is going to be. So, for example, when something shitty happens to me, someone says something shitty or I get that extra sort of, you know, hey, come into this room while I go through TSA clearance, you know, the meaning I put on that is of my choosing.

And if I put the meaning of it that, you know, I'm less than, I'm being wronged, that doesn't help me. It makes me feel like shit. And so I just decide not to feel that way. But I know that like, on the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty light. It's very different than never feeling safe, you know, going for a jog in your neighborhood or something like that. I think, you know, there's levels to it. And I haven't experienced those levels where it would be very, very challenging to put a positive meaning on what's going on. Yeah. It's just a confusing time because you feel so many different emotions and some of them are opposite. And I had to talk to the whole company today, which we're small, let's say 20 or 30 people.

And I was like, I don't know what to say other than if you guys like ever feel out of place, somewhere like our company we're we're gonna we're gonna make you feel safe um like we'll hire all types of people we like like like i didn't i wasn't sure if that felt like weak or like um like oh like like like barely anything right be done but i was like i don't know what i was like i don't know how to fucking handle this other than you're safe here but yeah you know i think that's the right approach because it's not about having the answer or the wisdom or the most heartfelt thing and the best speech, but like, I think it is important if you're the leader to show up as a decent human being in that moment and to say, look, I understand I'm also feeling this crazy mix of emotions.

I just want to do my best with this. Anything, you know, we're going to try to do our best with this. I think it goes a long way to just be a decent person and try to be present and visible there versus kind of shying away from it, which is what a lot of people do. Yeah, it's crazy. And I have a feeling once I have children. my opinion's going to change a lot. Like, or not my opinion, but my, I think I'll learn a lot.

Yeah. Like, having black kids or part black kids, I think, well, I'll, maybe I'll see something that I didn't previously see. Did you watch the Trevor Noah thing that he posted on YouTube or whatever? I did not. I'm typically not a fan of his. I think that a lot of times the shit he says is the wrong take. So I tend to avoid him, but I would.

I'd watch it if you suggest it. I avoid him because I don't think he's that funny, but I did watch this thing. And, you know, he brings up like what's going on. He's like, yeah, a lot of people are looking at what's going on and saying, well, this isn't right either, right? Of course, police should not murder citizens. That's wrong. But also rioting and looting and destroying things is also not right.

And what his point was, which I think made me better understand what was going on, his point was like, you got to think about this. What is society? Society is essentially a contract. It is an agreement amongst a group of people of here's what's right and wrong of how we're going to act. Here's the behaviors that are tolerated. Here's the behaviors that are not tolerated.

He goes, so what you're seeing is that one side of a contract, you know, if we go into a contract together and you're just breaching your side of the contract regularly and without recourse. And I just see, wow, this guy just keeps breaching his side of the contract. Then I also have no desire or incentive to uphold my side of the contract. contract. He goes, you'll see somebody that's homeless and, you know, they don't go and just murder necessarily because they're in a bad position. They say, look, these are the rules of the game. I'm losing in the current game or I have not been able to sort of get to an advantage position in this

game, but like I still respect that we're in a game together and there are rules of this game. He goes, what you're seeing now is that a group of people, you know, black people in America feel like the contract has just been breached over and over and over again, where they're, you know, unnecessary and unjust violence against us. And so now we're going to breach the contract too, and we're going to sort of make it very known what it feels like when the contract is being breached for apparently no reason,

and it doesn't seem like a positive thing. And so that made me look at, you know, when somebody is either protesting, whether it's peacefully or not peacefully, when somebody's rioting and they're creating a sort of unsafe environment for all, it sort of, I don't know, it's sort of explained to me

why somebody would behave that way. It's because if you feel like the other party is just terminally breached the contract and there's no recourse, then it's like, I'm going to terminally breach the contract and we'll see, we'll see how it feels. And now both sides feel what it's like when the societal contract gets totally breached. And let's see if that gets your attention. I definitely feel it. I feel it. I feel it. It definitely feels like almost like the end of the world a little bit.

It's like there's like a small. It's like in the same way. having a new puppy is just like a small taste of having a baby. It's like, that's how I feel right now. I'm like, if like the world, if like everything that I believed in is going to come to an end, it's going to like a little, a little like this. Right. And for every sad story, there's also an inspiring story where people are, you know,

waking up the next day and going and cleaning up the city and people standing together. And, you know, I think there's a lot of really positive things going on to. And I think that's the, you know, that's the, I don't know, silver lining or that's the other side of the coin here where is progress being made and I hope so.