My First Million - Breaking Down Two +$1B Companies Hidden In Plain Sight

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Episode 497: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) share 4 businesses that are crushing it — from airport security to Etsy store-owner’s favorite machine to well-branded women’s products. Plus, Shaan shares a dating app idea that‘s thoroughly OP. • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — 3 Special Announcements: 1) MFM Merch - https://store.mfmpod.com/ 2) MFM Clips Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ClipMFM 3) MFM Poker Tournament - www.cloudpokernight.com/mfm Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co • Copy That - https://copythat.com — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (0:30) Surprise 1: Merch! (5:05) Surprise 2: New YouTube Clips Channel! (8:15) Business breakdown 1: Clear ($3b) (19:33) Business breakdown 2: Cricut (25:20) The real story behind Native Deodorant (29:20) Business breakdown 3: Aunt Flow (32:52) iCracked (38:00) Business breakdown 5: Cloud Poker Night (45:30) Products that grow virally (not word-of-mouth) (47:20) Gamer Dating App — Links: • MFM Merch - https://store.mfmpod.com/ • MFM Clips Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ClipMFM • Clear - https://www.clearme.com/ • Cricut - https://cricut.com/en-us/ • Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/ • Native Deodorant - https://www.nativecos.com/ • Aunt Flow - https://goauntflow.com/ • iCracked - https://www.youtube.com/c/icracked • Cloud Poker Night - https://cloudpokernight.com/ • Dil Mill - https://dilmil.co/ • Evolv - https://www.evolvtechnology.com/ • Farmers Only - https://www.farmersonly.com/ — Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

There's like stories where she's raising funding and a guy leans over the table and was like, so why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company? And she leans back over, she goes, because I'm a complete and total animal. And the guy leans back and he's like, all right, I'm in. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

Okay, what's up? We are here. I got two little special announcements for you. First one, we got merch. The boys got merch. We're a little late to the game. We're a little slow. Most people start selling merch as soon as they get a following.

It took us four years, but Sam, we figured it out. You got to sell T-shirts on the internet. And hoodies, but I think that's all we have. We'll add more stuff, but we have a few stuff. It's pretty stupid that neither of us are wearing it today. Mine's in the dryer at the moment. Again. and stupid, yeah.

But yeah, it's pretty cool. We have stuff that has some of our favorite sayings. And, dude, there's no small-boy stuff shockingly caught on. Caught on in a big way. I'll tell you something. I don't know if you listen, but I did an episode with Samir from Colin and Samir, and they basically are like, they're YouTubers that study other YouTubers. So they're like, always studying creators.

And he handed me two things when he came to the interview. He handed me a newspaper. Did I tell you about this? No. He handed me a newspaper that was they made their own newspaper edition, like one edition, special edition for their like they hit some milestone. So they printed a newspaper and it was like all of the like kind of content or interviews from their show were like it's like here's the monthly magazine or whatever. Here's the thing for our stuff. Dude, let's do that.

That's a great idea. It's a great idea. It looked like a normal thing, but they made it using their content. And I was like, I love this. He gave me one. He's like, this is the last one we have. I don't know if that's true or not, but man, you know how to make a boy feel special when you say that. The second thing, he handed me this hat.

That was a dope hat that says press published, it's like this blue hat that has super high quality. And I was like, oh, this is like much higher quality than normal merch. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, here's how I think about merch. He goes, if you're Logan Paul or you're Mr. Beast, you make consumables. Think prime energy drink. It's a consumable. I'm selling this to you. You're going to drink it, use it, whatever.

And he goes, Mr. Beast, chocolate. He's going to, or even Mr. Beast merch has t-shirts. These are all just consumables. And he goes, we don't make consumables. We make collectibles. He goes, if you're a creator, you should pick one of the two paths. And I love this collectibles idea. He's like, because what you want is you want a way, look, you don't need to make a, you're

not going to make a fortune. You don't need to make a fortune through your merch. And which is why we've never done merch because it's like, I don't know, do we, we don't really care about making a couple thousand bucks on t-shirt sales. It's never been the, never been a motivated for us. because we're rich if you missed that part. All right. But the reason is,

oh my God. Should we put like, is that our new collectible? Like douchebags are us. Yeah, yeah. Coming to a store near you. But the collectibles thing made total sense to me where he's like, you want the people who are like kind of your thousand most,

most like kind of devoted people. People who actually give a shit about what you do. They're all about what you're all about. They think the way you think. They act the way you act. They're very similar to you. They're like, for them,

this is like collectible badge of honor. So make a limited edition number of units. And when it's gone, it's gone. It never comes back. And on top of that, you, it's a signal so that anytime anybody else sees them with that,

they know, oh. They know you're part of the tribe. They know you're part of the tribe. Like if I meet somebody, Ben said this to me the other day. He goes, he goes,

oh, you know what I like, because he, what he'll do often is he'll talk to people who come through my, DMs or email us or whatever. He loves to go meet them and talk to them. And I'm like,

that's great. You get a lot of energy from that. I'm more introverted. Don't like doing that as much. But he goes, no, he goes, the reason I like it is like,

normally I don't like just talking to strangers. But he's like, if you like MFM, there's like a 95% chance we're going to be friends. He's like, because it filters in people who think the way we think and act the way we act. And like,

you got a sense of humor. It's like, you're not going to like this content. If you don't, if you're not a total business junkie and nerd, you don't like to nerd. If you don't like to learn nerd about business, you're not going to like this podcast.

And if you like everything buttoned up in serious, you're also not going to like this podcast. And so it's a great filter. It's sort of like when I see another grown man drinking a glass of whole milk for dinner. You know what I mean? Like at dinner, like,

oh, hey, we probably have similar values. Good Catholic. What's up? So, yeah, I feel that. If you got a favorite flavor of Skiddle,

Sam, Sam knows you're his guy. What's the second thing you have? So, okay, that's the first surprise. Second surprise is a Clips channel. So this one actually, we should have done a long time ago. If you go to clipmfm.com. So this is our new Clips channel, which is basically we do these podcasts are about an hour each.

What ClipMMMFM does is it's a YouTube channel for only clips of the best bits from the pod, clipped out for you so that you can watch them in sort of like three, four minute bursts. And for every episode, we're only pulling out the one to three moments that actually mattered. So where somebody told a great story, had an amazing idea or shared something about the way their business works or broke something down in a level of satisfying detail. And at first, I wanted to outsource this. And then I was like, no, fuck that. I'm going to hand curate these clips myself because I'm like, I want the channel that I would want to watch. because this is how I consume a lot of podcasts.

Like if you're like, oh, do you like Lex Friedman? Yeah, like it. Love the pod. Great pod. I never actually watch the full ones. What do you search to find it? If you just go to clipmfm.com,

that'll take you there or the, you're going to search my first million clips. And I tweeted it out. It's got like 700 subscribers now. But I need this to get into the tens of thousands of subscribers. Because if you listen to this podcast, you're going to want to, like,

why would you not want to just get the best stuff faster? Or like in a more simple way. So yeah, anyways, that's my, that's my sales pitch for both the merch and the, the merch is collectibles, limited number of units. And it's just a way for our tribe to kind of signal to each other. Hey, this is what, you know, I'm in the, I'm in the club. And on the other side, we have the clips channel. How did I do with my sales pitch? That was a great pitch.

And the Skiddle joke was very funny. And you made me feel very guilty because my wife, listen, listen, my wife had her birthday's this Sunday. And I was going to surprise her with a pinata. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this episode. and I have a closet here in this studio room that is where I've hidden the pinata and I've also hidden tons of bags of candy that I went and bought from Party City.

Lots of Skittles. Unfortunately, I've got to go back to Party City today because I've eaten all of the bags of Skittles. So you nailed that one. They're all empty. There's a whole bunch of empty skittle bags over here. It looks like a raccoon went through that bag. That's not even like a small hole.

Why did you need a full? face size hole in that bag. Because when I do nighttime eating, I go into bear mode. And I'm like, I'm like a bear getting like a like a, like a beehive. You know, I'm just like, I'm just like, imagine just like using your fists instead of your fingers. That's like what I am at night. My sister says this thing to her girls.

Like she wanted them to like just go to their room and take put themselves to bed. So she invented something called nighttime sister playtime so that they would feel excited about. So like, oh, do you guys want to do nighttime sister playtime? And they're like, oh my God. Yeah. Nighttime sister play time. So they go to their room by themselves. they play and they fall asleep. And so I created nighttime daddy playtime, which is just when

my kids are gone and I get to just eat and be on the internet. And that's nighttime daddy playtime. And I celebrated it every single night. Dude, I'm like putting my fist in a jar of peanut butter at night. Like I wake up and there's like bear claws all over the place. So listen, I want to bring up a topic. You put it on your list. And it's so funny you put it on your list. Don't say what it is yet. But you put it on your list. And I did a ton of research on the this topic and it's incredibly fascinating. So I'm going to tell you about this. All right. We got to give credit. The reason we both have it on our list. Someone tweeted at us. They did. They go, you should do it. They just said you should break down this particular company. And I was like,

that's one of the very few times where I go, that's a great idea, sir. That's a good one. We're going to do that. So let me tell you how I got started. It's super fascinating. So there's a guy named Stephen Brill. You have no idea who he is, but I bet you know court TV. He started court TV, one of my all-time favorites, you know, predecessor of cops, my favorite show of all time and it turns into a huge success. And then he also starts American Lawyer Media, which is like a $600 or $800 million lawyer media company that he sells. So his next company, it's called Verify Identity Pass. It started in 03 after 9-11. And he wants to come up with an interesting way to make getting onto a plane easier and safer. He comes up with this thing where it's like a credit

card and you could swipe it in order to like prove that you're, I guess not a terrorist, something like that. And it gets, you know, a little bit of traction. He raises $100 million to start this business. He gets 200,000 people to sign up. It flops. Doesn't work out. So there's this woman, her name's last name, actually, but she's got this hedge fund, very successful hedge fund. What are you laughing at? Anyone named Karen, I just always think. Damn. What a side swipe they got in life by this trend that just started into whatever, 2022, and all of a sudden their name was never the same again. She spells it C-A-R-Y-N, which somehow makes it better, to be honest. I would too. Yeah, it does. I'd start going by Quran if I was, if I was named here. I just have to make a

slight pronunciation change. Yeah, like how I call Le Quinta Hotel's the Quida. It's just a slight rebrand. So anyway, she has this hedge fund. It's successful in all, but she hears about this company going out of business, and she's like, you know, this is actually interesting. And I think they made a mistake. They didn't brand it correctly. I think this should be more of a luxury, good company. And so she buys the business out of bankruptcy for $6 million. Then she goes on and raises $50 million. And she renames the company and she calls it Clear. Clear is that thing that a lot of you folks see at the airport. They are at around 53 airports, I think. It's kind of confusing at first. you see it because you're like, oh, there's two lines. There's a TSA line. There's a

clear line. What the hell is going on? Turns out this company is crazy successful and it actually has a lot more implications than I ever imagine. So Clear does something like $600 million a year in revenue market cap of $3 billion. And what they do is they built this technology at that stand where it looks at your eye and it uses biometric. So it looks at your eye to figure out who you are. It looks at your fingerprint and they like fast track you in that line. But have you ever wondered how they like get these contracts at these airports. It's like a monopoly. Yeah, I don't know how they do it. So they give away 10 to 13% of their revenue to the airports. And what that comes out to be is something like of their revenue in 2019, they were doing like 350 million in revenue. They gave

out $35 million to airports. Their most popular airport was LAX. That made them around $25 million in subscriptions of which they gave $3 million back to LAX. And so they're kind of like in bed with the government a little bit. And they have all these people on their board who, They took funding from Delta and they have Delta employees on their board. So like the head of Delta, they have like the former head of TSA security on their board. And it's crazy fascinating because what they're doing now. Wait, but tip, I was doing bad listening because I was looking it up while you were talking. How did they get into?

Like what was the thing that got them in? Because it's like, seems like once you're into the airport and you're the one, of course this is an amazing business. But what did they do to get in? What did she? What was the miracle that they pulled off there? They promised Air. reports that they would give them a percentage of the revenue. So they would open up a new revenue stream. And also what they did was they took funding from a couple airlines. And they, on their

board, they added like former head of TSA and things like that. And so like some old fashioned gentlemen's agreement. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty fascinating what they did. But what's even crazier. A, Karen's actually pretty amazing. There's like stories where she's raising funding and a guy, leans over the table and was like, so why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company? And she leans back over. She goes, because I'm a complete and total animal. And the guy leans back and he's like, all right, I'm in. And so, but they're killing it now. They have 17 million users. But here's where it gets really interesting. What they're doing, and I went and read a bunch of their annual reports. It's super fascinating and also scary. What they're doing is you can now sign

into LinkedIn using Clear. So you can create an account verifying your identity. You can also go to certain stadiums and buy beer using just your eyes. And so her whole theory is like, look, we're going to start with the airport, but eventually you're not going to use a wallet anymore. You might use Apple Pay for some stuff, but for something that involves your identity, you don't need to pull out your license anymore. We're just going to look at your eyes. And it's super fascinating what these guys have pulled off. And I didn't realize, I kind of thought it was like a douchy company because I'm like, This is $50 for TSA for five years. This other thing is like $150 for one year.

Why do I need this thing? But people still buy it. I think I was with you one time and you bought it. You didn't even know what it was, right? Well, we were late. We were about to, me and you were about to miss a flight to Miami. And so I was like, all right, McGiver, this line. How do we do this?

Okay, let me just sign up for clear real quick and see if we could jump the line. And it worked. You had TSA. I didn't have it. And so I cleared my way in and we got on the plane. It totally worked. And so it saves you just a little bit of time. But like what's crazy is that their vision is huge.

And it actually is like a super interesting vision that they have on how this business can be can be much bigger than it is now. And it's just like goes way more in depth than I ever thought. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm a believer in the rest of that vision because like I don't care. Like the amount of effort it would take for the you're at a ball game and you want to buy a beer. And now each beer vendor is going to buy hardware. to scan my retinas and I have to stand still for seven seconds while it scans my eyes just to verify my age. It feels like that's not the right payoff. Like the airport one makes sense because it's like, hey, look, airport security, it's a big deal. Okay, you can skip this line. And if you're a business

traveler, you're going to miss a flight. Those are high stakes. That's important. And so it seems like the right payoff to kind of like work ratio. I wonder where else that really exists where you actually need to on the spot verify your identity. So last summer, a new law was enacted. And so right now, if you live in, I believe it's Virginia, and you go to Pornhub.com or a bunch of other porn sites, yeah, go for it. I see you type in.

Interesting website you referred me to. I'll bookmark this one. So there's a new law enacted that for people in Virginia, you have to verify your identity in order to go to certain porn websites to prove that you're over 18. And so it like brings up like a camera where it wants. wants to take your picture from your computer lens to like check your identity. Shame you. It just starts, shame. It just starts coming with your headphones.

Like Game of Thrones. Shame. Yeah. Yeah. Like the avatar is like a, it's like a nun holding a rosary. And she's like, are you sure? But, but like there's like a few instances where this actually is interesting. By the way, those porn companies, some of the thing that they're doing is they're putting it on, they're making it so even if you're outside of Virginia, some porn websites are still making you register in order to like make you pissed off at the Virginia congressman who approved this.

They should put his name there. Hey, Mark Ingram and Virginia is forcing you to open your eyes and get scanned before you watch porn. If you feel any kind of way about that, push this button. Well, they even have like a Gmail login for some of these porn. It's weird. It's weird is what it is. But it's crazy.

But there are a few instances. But the most crazy thing about Clear is like, this is a total monopoly that they have in airports. And I'm shocked that they've had this. I don't know anything about public valuations. It seems potentially like an undervalued company. What is it valued at? And what was the revenue again?

It's in the $500 million range. They claim they have 90% retention. So it's not like as good retention as software. But it looks like their market cap as of today is $3 billion. I mean, that's kind of an amazing, like a $3 billion company that does such a simple thing. And you said they're only in like 63 airports or something like that. That's crazy that it's so big with such a small footprint and such a simple product. Very impressive.

Yeah, they're in 53 airports. They're the trailing 12 months, they've done $530 million in revenue. Wow. That's impressive. Here's a random related startup. Do you ever see this company called Evolve? they make metal detectors. No.

So their big thing was they're like, it's one of these businesses, like one of the meta takeaways of this podcast is all the businesses are hidden in plain sight. They're right in front of you. And if you just start, once you start paying attention, you're like, oh,

this didn't just get here. Who put this metal detector here? This is a company that does this. How do they work? Is this the same company at all of these places? How did they get that contract? And so metal detectors are at every big venue, right? You know,

stadiums. concert for, whether it's for concerts or sports, airports, that sort of thing. And so there's a company that had raised money from Lux, Lux Capital, like a VC firm that does like whatever, slightly hard tech or hard tech. And what these guys did was they were made a metal detector? Good pitch for them. They do, I don't know, whatever. Well, I was going to say, like, cutting edge hard tech.

And then I was telling me about this metal detector. It was like, I mean, those guys at the beach who are. nuts also hold metal detectors. I can't really call this cutting edge. Yeah. We do slightly hard stuff. Yeah. Harder than e-commerce.

So they, but their actual demo is pretty cool. So what they're doing is it's a metal detector that can let you just walk straight through much faster. So like you don't need to, I think it's like you don't need to like take, you don't need to take out everything for your pockets. And you don't need to like,

like, you know, like, I guess like it could just detect it faster. So the flow of traffic is faster than a traditional metal detector. And that's kind of just crazy to me that that's like such a simple idea that I'm like, oh yeah, I guess like, I guess that's true. Like if somebody just made a better metal detector going forward, they're going to win a bunch of contracts. I have this thing called cricket I want to tell you about. They spelled this funny. Do you know what this is?

By the way, have you ever heard, have you ever heard of a cricket machine? No. So it's C-R-I-C-U-T. No, what is that? Okay. Yeah. Ari, a new producer Ari is here, by the way. First episode. So if you like how this episode's going, if you like how it's edited, credit to Ari, if you hate this episode, blame on Ari. All right. So, all right, have you ever heard of this machine, the cricket machine? I have not. Okay. This is, it's a DIY, like, home crafting machine. It's 20 years. old. This company makes a billion dollars a year in revenue, $100 million of free cash flow a year, Sam. How does that sound? I like the sound of that. And what it is is it's basically a cutter.

So you put in some material. It could be plastic, could be a sticker like paper. And then it'll cut the shape for you. So you can do like die cuts like sticker or whatever. By the way, I barely understand how this works. So I'm going to butcher. Yeah, I'm looking at it now. It looks like a printer, but I guess it's like a printer, but it's more for cutting than from. printing. Yeah. So it's basically a way to cut different shapes of things. So you want to put something on a water bottle. You want to make a label. You can cut it using your cricket home credit. Is this an invention that they made or is this a sty on? Is this like a Kleenex tissue type of thing? No, it's more like when Steve Jobs was like I want, you know, every, Bill Gates or whoever was like, you know, every home was going to have a personal computer. He's like, you know, a computer on every desk. And that's basically what these guys did. So there was like, these, like, these. machines were there before for, you know, for people, for industrial application. And then they, what the company that started it was called like ProvoCraft or something like that.

They were making these machines for craft shops. So you would take your design to a craft shop and you'd say, hey, I'd like you guys to cut this for me this way. And they would have the machine on the, on the countertop to cut it for you because you're not going to have your own machine. These are expensive. What these guys did, what they made it smaller and made it more affordable so that people could just have these at home.

And, um, and so, you know, if you go, look at Etsy, you go look at things like this, a lot of those people know all about the cricket machine because they have them at home and they use it to make their goods. So how do they cut your name out in this cool looking font? They don't do it by hand. They have a cricket machine that will cut it for you. And so just an incredible business. And I saw, I heard about this because we were looking at an investment. So we're looking at an investment from some of the original guys who were early there. And they've spun off and they're doing like a new, a new, like better version of the cricket machine. And I'm like, yeah, I just don't know how big this space can be. He's like, well, I think it's going to be bigger than cricket, which does a billion dollars a year and is spitting off 100 million of free cash flow and, you know, is a public company. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. So, my bad.

And he was telling me some pretty incredible things about the crafting community. So he's like, you know stores like Michaels, they, he goes, Michaels, if you go read their kind of like, talk to their leadership or read their earning symptoms or whatever, he's like, Michaels believes that every single person who walks through their door is an Etsy seller. Their default assumption is that if you come to a Michaels, you are going to sell on Etsy because it's like more of the majority than the minority, which is kind of amazing.

And Etsy's this, obviously, this marketplace to go sell your goods. But if you look, okay, if that's how you sell your goods, well, then how do you make them underneath that? And so I am very tempted to invest in this space because it is such a big space. What's their product too? I don't want to give it up just because it's like kind of proprietary. But it's like something like cricket, but better. and does more things.

So the cricket just cuts. This does other things in addition to cut. Got it. So now, this came, by the way, through our buddy Al Dohn. So if you go back and listen to the episode with Big Al Done,

Al and his mom start a company in the quilting space. And the little breadcrumb trailer is we have Patrick Campbell on the podcast. Patrick Campbell runs a payments company called Profit Well, and we were like, hey, you see the payments of like lots of companies. Like, any cool trends in the payment space

that we wouldn't have thought of. He's like, quilting. And we're like, what? He's like, quilting is enormous. It's like quilting like the grandma hobby?

He's like, yes, enormous. There are companies that do blah, blah, blah, blah. So he told us about that. Afterwards,

I get a DM from Al Done. He's like, hey, I'm one of those companies that we make 100 million plus a year. My mom, you know, Jenny,

Jenny, or whatever started this business. And I joined her and like, yeah, we sell like kind of crafts for quilters. Like the squares, right? The patches, the squares, the fabrics,

and they do like a daily flash deal. It's like, oh, here's the quilting thing of the day. And like, that's how they do it. And so they built this huge thing to the point where he now bought a small town and he turned it into like the mecca of quilting. The Disneyland for quilters. It's like if you're a quilter and you want to take a trip to like indulge in your hobby, this is where you go.

And I'm like, wow, this guy's thinking big. I love this guy. He's a funny guy. And so he was talking about quilting. And then he introduced us to this deal. he's like, yeah, I'm investing in this thing because I'm in this craft space and I, you know, this is like one of the best kind of concepts we could do here. So I'm just getting, I'm just scratching the surface on like this space I know nothing about, but I'm very fascinated by this.

I wanted to share that with you. Dude, the Etsy platform is wild. Have you looked into like how big some of these sellers are? My mother-in-law started an Etsy store and she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars selling pillows on Etsy. Right. And one of the cool things about Etsy is you can go to the store and it'll show you how many lifetime sales, how many transactions have happened at that store. It's visible on every profile. Yeah, and you'll like look up something very obscure and you'll see that they've sold 50,000 versions of whatever they're, whatever they have. It's wild how powerful Etsy is. By the way, I believe this is how Moy's started native deodorant. So I think the like public story is like, my sister got pregnant and I was concerned for her health and

I wanted her to have aluminum and paraben free deodorant. I interviewed him about this. The real story is what? So I was in his office. Like, we shared an office. And so basically, he was just looking, I think he was like, maybe I'll do mattresses. A lot of people are buying mattresses. This is right when Casper was getting going. And he called that. So he's like, yeah, mattresses. But then he's like, shit, these are heavy. This is hard to ship. I don't know if there's like a lot repeat buying on this. And then he randomly came across a lady selling chemical free deodorant on Etsy. He ordered that. And then he ordered like five or ten other ones. And he asked everyone in the office, like, put this under your arms.

How's this feel? And it, like, some of it was good. And he's like, some of it was bad. But he found one that was great. And he goes, hey, lady, can I slap a native label on this? And we just resell your stuff. And that's how it starts. And then eventually he gets big and gets traction. He's like, all right, now we're going to make our own. Thank you very much. And I think, I think she helped him, like, formulate it and something like that. Well, she couldn't keep up with the demand. She was like, dude, I don't, I'm not trying to scale this to this level. like I'm you know my fingers hurt sir like you know can I can I take a break here and she was like how about this how about I buy the formula he's like how about I buy the formula off you and you help me

figure this out and then we'll we'll bring this to a manufacturer because we've outgrown your scale now like yeah and then and then after two years he sells the business for a hundred million dollars in cash and he that was like you know I think the business probably does like 200 million a year in sales so you could argue it was early but I think he turned out all right but he like sold the business like right before, maybe two years, three years before, like the whole DDC thing was like, all right, this is more challenging than we thought. But one of the insights was this is, I think natural deodorant was one of the top selling products on Etsy. And that's why he, he had market validation that there's something here. Aluminum free deodorant. I think this is not like,

him and many other people do this where like, you know, the business has this, this, you know, touching origin story. This is this wonderful backstory. But like, these are often, you know, reverse engineered later. That's not how a lot of these businesses work. One of my fun things is like, let's just be honest on this podcast and like say what it is. I started it like started the milk road because I was interested in crypto. I saw what you do with the hustle. And I was like, oh, I get it. I could do that. And I just did that with with milk road. A hustle for crypto. And I just like went down that road and did it. And my goal was to make a business. I made a bunch of money. Right. Like that's the thing. And I thought, oh, cool. Doing this, I'll learn about

a bunch about crypto. That's my, that's the, that's the trend. That's the transparent story. There wasn't like some origin story where, you know, my cousin needed help. And then it hit me. And then it hit me. I should just write this email for my cousin, you know, and I didn't stop there. I decided, you know, let's just open up for friends. You're all my cousins. Yeah, exactly. And so, like, I think you could do that again on Etsy.

I think you could always go back to Etsy and look for top selling products and use that as inspiration for the thing. And, you know, for Moyes, I'm sure, I don't know this, but like, I'll put a guess out there, which is that, like an arranged married, he had a checklist. He's like, what is under one pound for shipping? What is a recurring purchase? That's consumable. What is something that has a, you know, a differentiation against a big market, but has a unique differentiator like natural deodorant that's chemical free versus what old spice and

these other guys were doing? And like, yeah, had a checklist. And he's like, oh, good, deodorant, lightweight, you know, repeat purchase with a clear differentiator. Got it. By the way, these cricket machines are awesome. I think I might get one of these. These are. sick. They're expensive. They're like a grand. Here's promo code Sean Craft at checkout for 10 cents off. These are awesome. That's a good find. I mean, it's not like it was like a rare thing, but it's rare to us, I guess. But this is a good find. Yeah, this is out of our bubble for sure.

I invested this company that does this for bathrooms. And so they make women's like hygiene products. So like tampons, pads that go into like the vending machine. It's installed on the wall. And so it's just like a better, a better version of what used to be there. There's always something there. And it was just like kind of looked like something a janitor designed. And then they just made like a really beautiful version of one that was like easier to use, more friendly, just look cleaner, like, looked more hygienic. And then what happened is that every.

state started enacting laws saying that, hey, yeah, every woman's restroom needs to carry these products, just like you, you know, you have toilet paper, whatever you need to carry these products. And so state by state, this is rolling out. And what they're doing is they're going state by state into these stadiums or schools, universities, and they're getting these multi, you know, multi-million dollar contracts for installing their thing. And once they're installed, they're not going to take them out. It's sort of like clear. It's like these little monopolies that you can. can get if you're the right product and the right place at the right time with the right sales pitch because once it's installed, I don't think they're ever going to go uninstall these

things and change vendors because somebody has a slightly nicer design. Is that company working? Yeah, like I mean, I don't see, I can't share their like numbers right away. It's like those disgusting baby changing stations. What are those called kangaroo or Jack or something? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Those are filthy. Yeah, her name's Claire Coder. She's very like, she's a very strong, like leader kind of personality type person. And so she, she does a great job.

Like she's on LinkedIn. She's like super active with it. It's called the company by the way is called Ant Flow. And so has like a more more, you know, friendly name versus like what was there before. And what she described kind of like what the process was before versus after. You're like,

oh, I get it. And I get why other people haven't attacked this space. Because if, you know, most of the VC funding is going towards men, a lot of, founders who are trying to start

these venture skill companies are men, they're not even aware of this issue. Never even been in the bathroom. You wouldn't even know that this problem exists. But she's done an amazing job of like identifying the problem and then building a like super like a likable brand and a likable story where it's like if you could choose between the default alternative or this,

you'd obviously pick this. That's cool. I got pitched on a bunch of those. I passed on all of them because I don't know. But like that sounds good that it's working. hopefully it makes of money. I mean, getting those, when I saw, I was like, I don't know, man, selling like $2 things in the bathroom. It can that be a big thing? But you said they're getting million dollar contracts. Who pays for it? The facility. The facility has to,

has to do that. Wow. The facility needs to stock this product. And it's a recurring thing, right? They install the dispenser for, let's just call it like $500. So it's $500 to install the dispenser. And then you're every, you know, every month or every quarter, you're going to like have to do refills. And again, that thing's going to sit on the wall forever. It's, it's not going to go anywhere. And so to me, this is like owning a piece of real estate in all these that's going to pay your rent. And I think that that's just like, I don't know if this becomes like a $10 billion company, you know, that that's like different next level stuff. But it's clear that this is a defensible business. It's clear that it's going to have recurring revenue. It's clear that while there's

a lot of facilities out there and they're all going to have women's restrooms, multiple of them per building, and each one of those is going to need to have this in it. So it starts to add up pretty quick. Okay. So let me tell this story. You know actually these guys much better than I do. I only know it's secondhand, but I'm a fan of this. So back in the day, when you were doing the hustle, one of the very first things before I knew you, one of the very first things you created was this infographic about a business that I found fascinating. And it was a business called I cracked.

And I think what you were doing was you were trying to sell tickets to your conference. He was a speaker. And in your genius, you were like, okay, instead of saying come to my conference, buy tickets. you said, look at this incredible story of I cracked. These guys were in their, you know, whatever, college dorm room, A.J. and Tony, and they realized that smartphones are taken off. And so they decide, everyone else is building apps. Let's just try to fix people's cracked phones. Because the more cell phones there are, there's more crack phones is going to be.

And they made this like on-demand service. So if you crack your phone, same day, they know that's a big problem for most people. Same day, they'll come to you, grab your phone and fix your phone. and it had this crazy NPS score and it starts scaling. They get to like I think in the first you know, they only raised 500K and they get to 7.5 million

in revenue. And you write this, you make this great infographic. And I'm like, this was in the infographic heyday. Infographics were like the thing back then. Were they? You were the only one I saw doing with them,

but they were great. You and what's name, John, I think he was their design. He was the design guy. You guys did an amazing job. It's just you two doing the hustle. And so.

And then you, What you did was you're like, love this story. Want to hear more stories like this? In fact, want to hear AJ tell this story himself? He's speaking in a hustlecon in three weeks. Buy your ticket. And then I didn't, one, I'm not just going to buy a ticket, but you would release one every what, like week or so?

Yeah, one a week. One a week. And by the third week, I was like, damn, I love these stories. I don't, all right, I'll go to this conference. Like, sounds like, sounds like these are great stories. And so I went to hustlecon. And I met you and, you know, this story, you know, has a happy ending. So these guys.

guys, okay, so let me finish their story now because what they're doing is pretty interesting. So they go, they, what they realize is, okay, we need people are going to have crack phones. We need to scale and they scale through colleges. So they're like, they looked at this business like, uh, I tech, I guess, which is like, you know, sort of like a geek squad type thing. And they were like, all right, um, basically we just need to copy paste what we're doing to like, actually, I don't know if I tech was the company they're copying or that's what they called their people, but like, they looked at like how to scale this.

They figured it on one college campus. It's like, okay, we need these runners. We're going to be able to cover this radius and repair these phones this way. And they just copy past it across college campuses. And they basically, they taught college kids how to repair phones. And I crack would send them the leads. And they're like, all right, you got to go show up at this guy's house. You're going to charge them $300.

It's all done the phone. You get $100. We get $200, whatever it was, something like that. It's a sort of scale. They blitzed. And in 30 days, they were on 28 college campuses, which is amazing. They had booted up 28 campuses in 30 days. which I love.

They get into YC. They're one of the only non-technical teams to even get into YC. It's because this hustle is like obviously very appealing. And so at one point, they even buy like 200 smart cars that they like wrap in their eye cracked logo and they give to their I-Tex. And so they're all running around San Francisco fixing iPhones and shit. It was pretty cool.

And then it's like, okay, so how did you scale from there? They go, well, we started using SEO and press. And they're like, we realized that the press, loves to talk about the following headline, 24 year old making millions doing relatable thing. And it's like, he's like, started out of his college dorm room. And they're just doing something.

Now all of us need repairing your cracked phone. And these 24 year olds say they're making millions. And so they just took that story and they did it at the local level. So these Cincinnati, you know, this guy grew up in Cincinnati. He's making millions. other guy grew up in wherever he's making millions whatever college they went to they did it locally there um and oh they just booted up at this college campus so they did it locally then they did it

nationally and they started stacking so that when you searched fixed cracked iPhone they could show up organically at the top through SEO from these high authority publications that were writing puff pieces about them loved it so these guys are great now here comes the problem they're they've only raised 500k they're at seven and a half million it's profitable business is growing fast. They never announced this, but they go and they raise $50 million to scale the business. And that $50 million gets them to go international. And at peak, they get to $36 million in run rate, but it's just getting harder and harder

to keep up with the growth monster. And the growth monster is demanding that they get to $100 million in revenue because you raise $50 million. That means you've got to go huge. You've cut off your options. And so they just couldn't do it. And they just could not scale the business beyond that. and they end up selling it to all state.

Yeah, insurance company. And so one of the guys, he stays there for three years, he earns out his deal and he decides after year three, I'm going to quit start my next company. And that takes us to Cloud Poker Night. I used it. Oh, you did for Hampton? What did you do? Well, we tested it.

I was a beta user, and it didn't quite work out when we start when. You would be a beta user. I am beta. They called the right guy. We need a beta. Yeah. Get Sam on the phone. It was a little rough when we first started because there was only a few weeks in,

but I think now he like nailed it. And it was actually really fun. So I want to do two things. I want to show the homepage because I love what they wrote as the landing page. The copy on this homepage. Have you been to it? It's so good. Read it on.

So it says, Poker is the new sport for business minds. Golf is yesterday's news. Request access. And then there's a photo. It's a cute dealer dealing to. that's Anthony's wife. That's the founder's wife doing it.

Okay, great. Cute dealer. And then there's like, whatever, people playing and you get a demo of the product. So super strong landing page. Then you scroll down, it says, business minds who love poker. So just think about the positioning. So almost everybody would be like online poker night, right? Cloud-based poker for, you know, poker software.

This is like the generic, shitty way to market this. But instead, they not only say the benefit of it, they go even bigger. They just say, big picture. golf is the old way. Poker's the new sport for business people. That's the we don't sell saddles. We don't sell saddles here mantra. Like when Stuart Butterfield created Slack,

he wrote this great memo. If you've never read it, go read it. It's called We Don't Sell Saddles here. And he's like, look, guys, we made Slack. We know it's awesome. Now our job is to teach the world that this is awesome. Here's the problem. Most people you talk to that run a company are not in the business for

chat software. They're not looking for a team chat tool. It's just not a thing they even do. They're not even looking for it. So even if we say we're the best team chat software, it doesn't matter. They don't care. They're not into it. He's like, Lulu Lemon made you want to do yoga, to live the yoga lifestyle. And he's like, we need to do the same thing. We need to, we need to sell, instead of selling saddles and saying, we make the best saddles, we need to sell the joy of horseback riding. And then when they're, once they fall in love with the idea of horseback riding, they're going to say, where do I get a saddle? And we're going to say, we provide, we sell the best saddles. And so same thing here. I love what he's doing by saying, poker is the new sport for business people.

That's the selling the dream. And then, okay, how are we going to go play poker? Use our software. And they have all these, like, quotes about, you know, successful people who have played poker. And I recognize a few of these people. There's Warren Buffett. There's Sam Altman. There's Paul Graham, Peter Thiel. And look at that. There's the chairman of the milk. road is on their website. Oh, wow. You're on there. That's insane.

I had no idea. You are on there. Sean Perry. I did not set this up for that. I did not know that. I'm on the page two of the carousel if you swipe. So I never got that far. But what they did was they go,

business minds love poker. Then it's a quote and it says, which leader said this? Warren Buffett, Chimoth or Paul Graham. And you're like, oh, that sounds like Chumoth. Nope, it was Paul Graham. Okay, cool. And then it shows you another one.

So again, using sort of the people you already trust to say that poker, They're not saying cloud poker night is great, but they're saying poker is the sport for business people. And then it's why poker is so great, blah, blah, blah. And then it says why you should use our software, which I love. So I think this landing page is amazing. But you have to explain how it works.

So basically, I mean, I've used it. So what it is is we are going to use it for Hampton and we're still going to, but we did it for a team night. And the way it works is it's almost like Zoom meets poker. So they have like a professional setup. In my case, when I use it, it was Anthony, the founder. He's got this home setup that's a card table. And then there's a camera on him.

And you see him dealing the cards. And you see him talking to you and interacting with you. And you can see all your other teammates also playing. But he puts the cards over another camera of which only you, the user, you see your own card. So it's really like live poker. And there's even a dealer who's like shooting the shit with you and like asking if you want to hit it. It's really fun. It's very interactive.

It's awesome. I think it's a great business idea for a bootstrap business. I love this idea. Um, yeah, I love poker. I played poker my whole. I really, I think this is a cool idea. I would love to do an MFM version of this. So like, that's a great idea.

I mean, hold on. I think they did make one for us. I asked the guy this morning, I go, hey, this would be amazing. I don't like like, like the live shows we did were cool because we got to meet people who listen to the pod. That's awesome. But I don't like travel. I don't like leaving my house.

And so this is great because we get to play poker. We get to be on camera, meet other people who are, um, listeners to the show. And we can just host our own tournament. And so I think he's going to do cloudpokernight.com slash MFM. So there will be something there, he says, to R&SP for this. So if anyone wants to play in a poker night, we should do that with people who listen to the pod. I think that would be kind of amazing. By the way, the other founder, so you talked about Anthony, Anthony Martin.

He's one of the co-founders of Icracked. The other co-founder, AJ, is one of my great friends. He's a crazy person. He's one of the wildest people I've hung out with. His other company, or his new company that he started, it's a, the company. call it a, like one headline called it, the Tesla for chicken coops. So if you go to coop dot farm, it's a smart chicken coop. And he like keys into like beekeeping and he's always had chickens and animals and shit like that. So he made a smart chicken coop that like opens the

doors automatically and feeds the chickens automatically. It's pretty funny. I almost invested in it. But I'll explain one of the reasons that got made me nervous is the like the day or a few weeks or something like that before the round closed when the Ukraine thing happened. AJ went to Poland for like a month and was a volunteer helping like Ukrainian refugees. And the guy's crazy.

Is he Ukrainian? No, he just is into that shit. He just does wild shit all the time. Like, I'll be hanging out with them and he's like... Didn't he used to boat to work? Yeah, he lived right near Oracle and the office, his eye-cracked office, was in Redwood City, but it was

across this little bay and he would take this little boat to work. But every once in a while, they had offices at Soma, and he would ride his, this is like a small boat, literally fit two people. He would ride this little boat 20 miles up the bay to Soma and dock his boat there. The guy's crazy. You would do crazy. No, and when I say boat, I remember you told me that like a decade ago, and I still remember you were like, yeah, my friend, he's kayaking to work. By the way, boat's not the best word. It's better describe it as a jet ski that you stand up on. So like he would jet ski to work basically. That's how small this thing was. So was he paddling or it was a motor? No, it had a motor. It had a motor. It had a motor. It was like a jet ski. He was like, he was like Kenny Powers. He would like jet ski to work. He's the AJ is crazy. He's a crazy person. Didn't this raise a bunch of money from Peter Thiel? Yes. Yeah. They raised money from Peter. He's like, Peter. I see you're crazy and I raise you. It's like, say with me, Peter, chicken coop.

It's a weird business, but I think it could work. Yeah, that's amazing. So I think this is a really cool business. I want to see how this goes. I actually want to invest in this. I wish I could own a piece of this and just host poker nights. Because one of the great things about business like this is the virality. So I'm very interested in products that can grow virally.

And most people get this wrong. Products that grow virally are not products that succeed through word of mouth. Like if you talk to a normal person, oh, yeah, it spread virally. People used to go tell their friends because they loved it so much. No, no, no. That's called word of mouth. Viral is literally like the word sounds. It's like a virus.

You're not even trying to get it on other people, but it gets on them. They catch it from you. So like the classic example of this was hotmail. At the end of every email, it was signed like, you know, sent through hotmail. I was sent with love through hotmail or something like that. So you weren't trying to tell somebody, hey, you should start a hotmail account. But it was added to every email as almost. like a little virus that was attached to the email that basically said,

sent through hotmail, get your free account today. And so people started signing up and had this crazy viral coefficient. And products like Cloud Poker Night have a different kind of virality, which I think I don't know what it's called, but group virality or something, similar to how Eventbrite grows or Meetup.com grows, which is an attendee becomes a host. So a host creates an event. Naturally, they need to invite a bunch of other people because that's how an event works.

and then you might be in the 100 people that attend some event. And if you liked that experience, the next time you're thinking about hosting an event, you'll go use that same product because you got sort of, it was incepted into your brain through somebody else.

So I think the same thing will happen here. What I would want to do is I'd want to host a bunch of these for fun using the MFM community. But then guess what? The MFM community, when they have a good experience as a player, would then host it for their team bonding night or their corporate events or sales events

or whatever for their businesses. And I think that's how these businesses, can grow. Yeah, I think it's cool. What do you want to do? Cricket or game or dating idea? I'll do the gamer dating. Okay, so, Sam, here's why you should date a gamer.

I know you're married, but if you could go back, here's why you should have dated a gamer. And me too. My wife, she doesn't play any games. I just bought a PS5 hoping that maybe that would sway her. She instead just got upset. So here's why you should date a gamer. You're not a gamer, are you?

I'm like the least gamer, gamer. I'm in the club, but just barely. I'm by the door. I'm by the exit door. I played call duty last night for like the first time in the year. It's shit's impossible. These kids are too good. It's so difficult. It's unbelievably difficult. It sucks. Also, all the popular games now, they're like PubG. It's like, yeah, you jump out of an airplane. I'm like, oh, wow, that sounds exciting. And then it's like, you land. And now you just sort of walk around. You live for 20 minutes. And then you're not going to see anybody during that whole time. You're just going to be collect. And then you're just going to be

collecting supplies. I'm like, okay, cool, but for what? It's like, because then when you do see someone, I'm like, but I never see anyone. They're like, yeah, that's the problem. You're just going to get shot in the head and it's going to start again. And it's like these games where nothing happens is crazy. Anyways, here's why you should date. Dude, by the way, I played, I played, I played college duty last night and I played this thing where's three guys, we're on a team and we have to do shit together. And it was two guys that must have been friends. And they were talking to each other in Spanish. And I was so, I was so bad that I couldn't see or hear or understand they were writing. I couldn't. I couldn't. understand any of the words that they were saying other than bot. This is a bot. He's so bad. It's a bot. Bominos. And they quit on me because I was so bad. Just bot, Bomenos. Like, that's all that's how bad. I remember I got call it a bot. And I thought it was a good thing because I was like, oh, AMBot. I must be on like on lock that they're calling me a bot. And then I was like, no, this is, they're saying. This is like an NPC. All right. So let me do my bit here. Here's why you should date a gamer. They're smart. They, you'll never have to worry about where they a Friday night, you know, they're just going to be in the room, playing.

You know, they're not at the club, they're not doing anything scandalous. They'll fight for you. She did a gamer. They'll stand up for you. They're used to go into war on these things. They're easy to trick into doing things because you just give them a badge or a level or some sort of, you know, medallion. And they'll just grind for that, for that prize. They're tech savvy.

They can set up your internet and fix stuff whenever anything's broken. And they'll always give you space. If you get for the tempers that need space, they'll give you space. But here's the problem. You may want to date a gamer after that great sales pitch, but the problem is there's no gamer dating app. And that's my idea. I think there should be an app for gamers to meet other gamers.

Here's why this matters. Wouldn't that be a sausage fest? I mean, how many gamers are women? All dating apps are sausage fest. That's the trick. The guys only see the girls. The girls only see the guys unless you switch the settings, right? So it's like, yes, like all dating apps, the ratio will be 30 to one.

that's expected. But that's normal for a dating app. Here's why I think it's cool. I think gamers have a lot in common. I think gamers are a pretty big market. There's hundreds and hundreds of millions of gamers out there. The gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood. So it's like if you think people like movies, people like games more.

But there's no easy way to meet a gamer. And if you meet a gamer, you actually have a lot in common. And you might have things to do in common. And so I think one of the hard parts about dating apps is that they're all profiles. and flirts and not really dates. And then a bunch of companies came in and were like, we're going to get you on a date. But then the reality was like getting people out into the real world to go on a date

is kind of like really, really high friction. And matching them was a pain in the ass. I did a bunch of those. I think that gamer dating would work because you could be like, cool, you matched. You guys are both interested in each other. And you might play, you have some games in common because that's part of your profile.

What games you guys both like to already play? Go squad up. Play a game. Go play Call of Duty together. And in doing so, you're going to be talking. you're going to be doing something together. It's like going bowling, going put-p-puck golf,

but just more fun. And so I think somebody could, this is a legit idea. First I was going to save this for a drunk ideas episode. And then it kind of grew on me. I was like, no, no, no,

this could actually work. Like, if you think this can't work, let me remind you that there is a dating app called Farmers Only, right? There's dating apps called Black People Meat. And those that work. If you think those could work

and gay redating can't work, you're nuts. Gay redating could definitely work and it could definitely be big, definitely go, sell it a match for like $75 million in three years. Is farmers only still a thing? You know, I haven't checked in on it a little while, but they used to run like TV commercials.

Yeah. You haven't been keeping tabs? Their website looks very old. Still paying the hosting beat. All right, they're doing 700K and monthly visits, so not bad. That's so funny. What's your name for it? I don't have one just yet, you know, working title, TBD, open to suggestions.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty bad idea. Well, I sold it pretty hard, so that's just funny. I mean, maybe, dude, dating, dating apps suck. That's the worst business there is, man, because only like three or four of them. It's like a winner take-all market, you know what I mean? I don't want to frame it started. There's tons of dating apps. I mean, who's the winner that took all?

Tinder? No. Bumble? No. Batch. E-Harmony? No. Okay, Cupid.

It's like social media, where it's. It's like there could be, you know, there's hundreds of social media platforms, but there's like four that matter. You know what I mean? I remember when I was at Monkey Inferno, a guy came to the office, guy named KJ. And he's like, I'm going to make an Indian, like, you know, there's Jewish dating apps. There's farmer dating apps. There's black people dating apps. I'm going to make an Indian dating app.

I was like, all right. That's a good idea, I guess. And I was like, do you have any background on this? He's like, I'm Indian and I'm trying to date. And he's like, you know, that's my background. I was like, okay, I guess super qualified. And then he's like, um, he's like, here's what we're going to do differently.

He's like, I was like, so what are the features? Like, what do you have to do to differentiate? He's like, well, I told you. It's an Indian dating app. So the app's going to say, this is for Indians trying to meet other Indians. I was like, oh, he's right. That is actually the main feature is that you're going to curate the people and sort of filter for people who want to meet other Indians. For farmers who want to meet other farmers, whatever.

For Jewish people, want to meet other Jewish people. And so I was like, okay, I guess that is already better than Tinder. If you're an Indian person who wants to be an Indian because you're going to get 100% hit rate here versus maybe a 5% hit rate on a generic dating app. And I was like, okay, so how you make money? He's like, do you know how much people pay for dating apps? Like to, I'll do the same business model. I was like, all right, I'm trying to poke holes, but he's just got it covered.

And I was like, but how are you going to like, I was like, what do Indians care about more than others? He goes, oh, that's where I'm going to do something different. I'll go, okay, here it is. What's the big feature? What's the big tech breakthrough? He's like, like, your mom is your like co-user? You log in with LinkedIn.

And I go, what? And he goes, yeah. I don't know if people know this. Indian culture, it's like a big deal of like, there's like a, Indian people date on like a checklist. It kind of stems from like the arranged marriage background where literally you marry on a checklist. You know what the pickup line is for like I have most of my friends are Indian

because you and Neville, my best friend's Indian. The pickup line when you're around other Indians is, so what do you do? That's basically like, that's like what they do. Yeah, so basically he's like you're going to log in with LinkedIn. so we know that you have like a legit job. And I was like, okay. And then he's like, yeah, that's like the main thing that, you know,

helps separate people. You know, I was like, whoa. So he builds this app. It's called Dil Mill and he, which means like hearts meet. How do you spell it? D-I-L-M-I-L. He builds this app and I'm keeping track of this guy. And he, and sure enough, he just starts going into like all the niche communities,

newsletters, blogs, YouTubers, just promoting. it, running ads, basically saying, hey, if an Indian person, you're tired of striking out on dating apps because Indian people have like terrible success rates on Indian apps, on normal dating apps. I think OKCupid said that like the worst, like in the free market of dating, I think the absolute worst was an Indian male. A close second was like Chinese male. They were like the two least desirable according to the OKCupid match data that they've released.

And you know what the highest was? I think the highest, the most liked person, I think was an Asian one. woman. Exactly. I think it was an Asian woman was, was number one. Because they were getting all the attention from the Asian guys and the white guys,

I think. I was like the data, what it's what it showed is like they get like, it's like top preference amongst two big user groups or something. And there's just like weird stereotype that like, uh, Asian women are supposed to be more submissive and dumb shit like that. And I think that there's like some weird like kinks out there of,

spoken like a true white guy. Um, of like, no, it's like men who have had like oppressive like mothers. The average white male. So hey, it's on the, it's on, Christian Rudder wrote that blog post, the founder of OK, Cupid. I think that's like the whole thing.

Their blog posts were great. That was a great strategy they had. Anyway, so he, whatever, five years later, he sells the thing. I think he sold it for $75 or $100 million to, to the match group. No way. And they were like, yeah, we match group is a collection of dating apps. We have our, our generic catch-all mass market apps, Tinder, and what's the other one? match.com. And then they have all the niche apps. And so they own like 20 dating apps or something like that.

And so if you just fill one of those verticals that they don't have a winner in, they'll buy you at like a preset multiple. And I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive. They paid $50 million for it. I don't know, man. This guy, KJ, he's pretty good looking. And now he's rich. I think he, I think he's probably doing all right. I met up with him the other day. And he was like, you didn't believe. And I was like, well, you're right. I didn't believe. And actually sort of, you know, when I didn't believe, I really wanted to be right. I'm sorry about that. It was kind of rooting against you in a way. But then you proved me wrong.

And you were absolutely right. Congratulations. You did a great job. Have you seen the Indian Netflix show where it's like your parents are setting you up with like this matchmaker? Dude. So at first, I thought that shit's the worst where, you know, like your parents were just telling you what to do. But when you think about it, it's kind of like, it's kind of like. the paradox of choice, right?

Where they're just like, this is it. This is the one. You are doing this. You kind of are forced to find happiness in that. And it doesn't seem actually, maybe the worst arranged marriages. Are they? I have no idea. Are they bad?

Or is it kind of, they can be and they can't be? I think the stats show it's about the same divorce rate as in America. But what that doesn't show is that any people don't get divorced. They're like, you know, they're like, we will suffer in this unhappy marriage rather than get divorced and be happy. but have society know that we failed at our marriage or whatever. So I don't think there's a way to really know how successful or unsuccessful it is. Me and, by the way, quick Indian story.

Me and Neville were out to dinner with Darmash at HubSpot. And Neville was saying how he doesn't, he's like, man, India, like, that's where I'm from. And I go back there and it makes you grateful to be in America because like these guys got nothing. And like, it's not very nice over there, this and that. And he was like, not insulting. like poor Indians, but like saying like it's like a pain in the butt to be in that situation. And Darmesh was like, yeah, that was me. I was that guy.

I had nothing. And I came here. I was like one of those guys like, you know, we had nothing. And they were all just talking about India. India sounds like a wild place, man. It just seems wild. I love when people describe things like that. Because how do you, you know, you can only agree with that.

You can't really disagree with X is a wild place. It's the same thing as our business pitch of like. Like, it's this just beautifully done. We're just going to do it beautifully. It's the same thing. It's like, dude, that's a wild place. It's like, what? The food?

The cult's the crime? What are we talking about here? Here's the story you told. The story you told is that when your mom came to America, I don't know if you were joking or not. You said tooth, that blew my mind. You said, the first thing you said, she had never used utensils. You said that.

Do you remember saying that? This is all on record. You're like, she didn't use utensils. That's what you told. that's what you said on this pod. Mom, if you're listening, I know you never said that. I didn't say that. I'm being bullied by Sam.

You, no, I am not putting any judgment here. I am repeating what you said. The second thing, you said, you go, when she went to hang up the phone, she didn't know how to hang up the phone, so you should just let it, like, hang out on the bay phone. And it was a while to hear that story. That was, it was like, it made me love your mom is what it did. She told me the story. It was unbelievable.

She's like, I got on the plane. I'd never been on a plane before My parents just dropped me off at the airport I'm 17 years old I've never been on a plane before I don't even know what a plane is really I just get shuffled along I show somebody my ticket

They send me here, send me there Okay I get on a plane And she's like I think it's like a train That's all I've ever seen is a train And so I'm just thinking this is gonna be like a train ride And she's flying like 14 hours Tell her that it goes in the air Her parents didn't know either

They never been on a train a plane either They were just like this how you get to America She's like okay Don't ask too many questions That's insane She's like I you know plain seatbelts are kind of funky. She's like, I did it.

I just like pushed it, and I went in on the first try somehow miraculously. And the person next to me looked at me, it was like, oh, you've flown before? And she's like, I was like, oh my God. I don't even know what I'm getting myself into. No, I have no idea what I just did. I have no idea how I'll get this off.

And whatever, I guess I have a few hours to figure out how to unbuckle this by the time I need to get off at my stop. So then for 14 hours, she's lying. And she stays awake because she's like, I don't want to miss my stop. And she's like, this thing's not stopping. What's going on? She's like, doesn't know how planes work.

It was crazy. The whole thing was insane. Doesn't that make you feel soft? Your mother is so much more brave than we are. It makes me feel incredibly lucky that, you know, she did all the hard stuff so that I don't have to do it. Yeah, shout out. It's like, shout out, mom. Bird moms, like, chew food and then just spit it in their baby's mouth so they don't have to chew.

That's what I feel like she did with life. She just, like, chewed life for me and then spit it in my mouth and I just have, like, the easy life. And on that visual. All right. Well, thank you. That's the pod. What is it?

Mfmpod.com. We got the merch. And then what's the clip website? ClipMFM.com. Or just go to YouTube and search My First Milling Clips. And please subscribe. That way we'll have the like when there's 500 subscribers,

we don't have a lot of incentive to do the work of cutting, picking the perfect parts, trimming them down, cutting them. And titling them and making them like available to you if you don't have time to watch the full episode or you want to share just the best bit with somebody. Because, you know, sharing an hour long podcast of somebody is like assigning some, you know, asking somebody to help you move on Saturday. Like it's just a tough ask. But sharing a clip is like doing somebody a favor.

And so, uh, go subscribe to that thing so that we, um, yeah, we're like motivated to get to do that. I want to see that thing grow. All right. Check it out. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.